Gothic - Outtakes
by author-self-insert
Summary: Because I felt like it...
1. Chapter 1

**Meyer owns all**

 **The High School Years**

 **Tanya**

'Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.'

Tanya snapped the book closed. Why were they reading Poe anyhow? The teacher probably thought it was a joke. Like death is a joke. How sick is that?

She glanced around the parking lot. Where was James with that joint already? Edward and his friends were such losers, but at least James wasn't a goody-goody like Edward, Mr. White Knight.

Edward, who couldn't even be bothered to notice when the world was imploding. Why should he care? His life was perfect.

Tanya laughed to herself. Her life was perfect too, wasn't it? Just a mother cold and dead in the ground like one of Mr. Poe's little corpses. But Tanya was supposed to have gotten over it by now. Isn't that what everyone said? They could go to hell.

Tanya imagined digging her mother up, just like the guy in that Poe story who was so obsessed with his dead cousin.

What did the school think it was doing, giving them stuff like this to read?

She wouldn't be bothering with the Poe either if James would just show up. She was waiting for him in her car in the parking lot of the Thrift-N-Save. What a stupid name for a store. If James didn't show up soon, she was going to make his life a living—

"Hey Tanya." James knocked on the passenger side window.

Tanya unlocked the door. "Where have you been?" she snapped.

"I got held up." James slid into the passenger seat and shut the door.

Tanya snorted. "Have you got it?" she asked.

"Of course." James grinned.

"So hand it over."

James' grin widened. "What are you going to give me for it?"

"Excuse me?" Tanya was going to rip out his throat.

"You know. Payment."

"I've got a little money."

"I don't want money," James leered. "I think that I deserve a little something special, considering everything that I had to go through."

"Everything that you had to go through?"

"You know, I had to drive all the way up to Port Angeles."

"It's not on the other end of the country."

"I could have gotten arrested."

"Forget it."

"I thought you wanted it."

"And I thought you were my friend. I thought you were _Edward_ 's friend. You know, the guy I'm dating."

James scoffed. "Oh, I haven't forgotten about him."

"So what are you doing propositioning me?"

"I'm not propositioning you. I'm making a business transaction."

"You're a business man?" Tanya couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"I've got bills."

"You're in _high school_."

"I won't be forever."

Tanya huffed. Whatever. It didn't matter. If she was high, it's not like she would care. "Fine. Let's just get it over with."

James leaned towards Tanya as if going in for a kiss. She held up a hand.

"Joint first," she demanded.

He scowled, but handed the joint over.

She pulled out a lighter.

"You're not going to light up here are you?"

"It's the freakin' Thrift-N-Save. It's nine o'clock at night. We might as well be in the middle of nowhere." Tanya lit the joint.

"Crap," James cursed, peering out of the window.

"What?" Tanya lowered the joint.

"It's that new girl. The chief's daughter."

Tanya squinted, trying to see through the gloom. She saw the new girl walk up to the door of the Thrift-N-Save and lean over to read the store hours. Tanya had been so busy arguing with James that she had missed the girl pulling into the parking lot.

"Did she see us?"

"I don't know." Tanya was parked on the side of the store where there weren't any streetlights, but she wasn't going to take any chances. She and James watched the new girl walk back to her truck and drive away. The new girl hadn't glanced in their direction, but if she had a cell phone she could already be on the phone with daddy.

"We should get out of here, just in case," James warned and Tanya agreed. She waited until the new girl was out of sight before starting her car.

She didn't even make it out of the parking lot before the cruiser pulled up.

*_.*_.*_.*_.*

Tanya didn't set out to destroy the new girl. It just happened.

The first time Tanya snapped, it was because she saw the girl in the hallway walking to class like she didn't have a care in the world. Tanya couldn't help it. She was just so angry about being arrested. But she expected the girl to fight back, call her a druggie or a loser. Something. Make fun of Tanya for not having a mother's guiding influence. But the new girl just dropped her head and scuttled away.

Tanya expected the cops to show up at her door that night. They never showed.

So Tanya mocked her again the next day.

And the next day.

And the next day.

Pretty soon, Jessica and Lauren were following her example, just like sheep.

Mr. Perfect and his boyfriend, Jasperina, were oblivious. Some friends they were. Too self-involved to even realize that all of this community service that James and Tanya were suddenly doing might be just a bit suspicious. Like Tanya wanted community service hours for her college applications. She wasn't going to college. This community service was court-mandated.

James was all too happy to join in on Tanya's plan of revenge against Little Miss Police Chief's Daughter. And he got Jasper in the act after a while. It took Tanya's intervention to open Edward's eyes.

"Look at the freak," she said to Edward one day while they were sitting in the cafeteria.

"What?" he asked. Idiot.

"I said, 'Look at the freak.'" Tanya pointed.

Edward shrugged.

"Really?" Tanya asked. "You think that outfit's okay? And her hair? She hangs out with Brandon."

"She's a mess. So what?"

"So, I don't like her."

"What she ever do to you?"

"She was born."

Edward sniggered.

But Tanya kept at him. "She thinks she's so smart," Tanya argued. "She thinks that she's better than everyone else."

Unfortunately, Edward was pretty smart himself, so he wasn't likely to buy that argument. Tanya tried another one.

"She made fun of my mom."

Edward's eyes snapped to Tanya's. "You're kidding."

Tanya shook her head. "She did."

"How does she even know about your mom?"

"Everyone knows about my mom," Tanya sniffed. It was true, wasn't it? Forks High didn't exactly have much going on. Why shouldn't people still be talking about Tanya's mom?

"What did she say?" Edward asked.

"What do you think?"

Edward cursed.

"Yeah," Tanya retorted. "So that's why I hate her."

And that was how Tanya got Edward in on her plan to destroy the new girl. By the time that Tanya was through with her, Isabella Swan was going to want to kill herself.

Tanya was intimately acquainted with the subject of suicide, after all. People might not have had the guts to say it to Tanya's face, but everyone thought that Tanya's mother had killed herself. As if a mother of three would abandon her daughters like that.

It was an accident, Tanya told herself. It was an accident.

Just like it was an accident that Tanya had let James into her car that night at the Thrift-N-Save. She told the police that she didn't know that he had drugs on him, but they didn't believe her. She had drug residue on her fingers.

The owner of the Thrift-N-Save was the one who'd called the cops. He'd been in the back of his stop doing inventory. He was sick of kids lighting up in his parking lot.

But Tanya was sure that he wouldn't have even noticed that they were there if the new girl hadn't gone up to the door. Tanya was going to destroy her, if it was the last thing she did.

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 **Mr. Berty's (teacher) POV**

Were they serious? They were going to put me on suspension for failing to catch a fake advertisement in the school newspaper?

'Desperate geek seeks flat-chested freak for some girl-on-girl action – IBS.'

It wasn't that bad. It was obvious who was meant but so what? Kids today needed to grow a thicker skin. Killing themselves and bringing guns to school just because someone picked on them. F'ing losers.

They weren't paying me enough for this. I'd had no choice but to 'volunteer' for that student newspaper gig and now they were going to take it away from me just because I didn't go over every line of it with a fine-toothed comb?!

I stood in the hallway, watching the little brats scurry to their classes. This hallway monitoring was ridiculous too. Like the sight of me standing here did anything to discourage their antics. Cullen and Denali groping in the corner, for instance. His tongue had to be halfway down her throat. I had it on good authority that Tanya Denali wasn't above sleeping with a teacher for an easy A, but I'd yet to have her in any of my classes.

There went Izzy with her hood pulled low. The 'disguise' did nothing to deter the wolf whistles and cat-calls. 'Why don't you just kill yourself?' the Stanley girl hissed.

I couldn't help smirking. They were all so juvenile—both the bullies and Swan. In fact, if Swan had any sense at all, she'd come to school in a bustier and bright red lipstick, sneak into the guys' locker-room and spread it for a couple of morons on the football team. Then she'd see how quickly that reputation for being a lesbian disappeared. Who did she think she was saving herself for anyhow? True love? Unlikely with that face.

The bell rang and they all disappeared, like roaches with the lights coming on. God, I hated my job.

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 **Outtake: Eric in Science class**

"He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp," Eric read, his eyes quickly scanning the printed text. "'O God!' I screamed and 'O God!' again and again; for there before my eyes—pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands like a man restored from death—there stood Henry Jekyll!"

The bell rang and Eric dropped his book on the lab table, wondering why they didn't read more Stevenson. Jekyll and Hyde—now that was a story that Eric could identify with.

"So, as you know, we're going to be working with hydrochloric acid today," Dr. Banner started, with that sing-song way of his, "which means that we're going to review all of our safety precautions first. Yes, I know that we already went over them. I don't care. We're going to review them one more time."

Eric groaned. 'Could this be any more boring?'

Eric wanted to know why he even had to take this class. It wasn't like he was going to be a nuclear engineer. Best case scenario, the day of graduation, Eric was going to steal his brother's car and disappear. Move to the desert and start an exciting career in the forgery of government documents. Stupid career aptitude tests didn't take that one into consideration, now did they? It wasn't as if there was a large job market for the artistically inclined slacker with a high IQ and zero ambition.

Eric sighed and glanced at his lab partner. At least Tyler would just sit back and let Eric do all of the work. It could be worse—Eric could be saddled with Edward. What a jerk. Eric didn't understand why Mr. Banner wouldn't let them choose their own lab partners, like exercising some freedom in this regard would be the first step towards total anarchy. Oh, Mr. Banner would sometimes ask aloud why Tyler wasn't helping Eric out and he'd glare in Edward's direction whenever Izzy looked particularly distraught over some passing remark, but what good was that? Mr. Banner said that they had to practice getting along with people that they didn't like, because that was the "real world." BS. In the real world, Eric figured that people just picked their clique and stayed there. Like if you were a math nerd, you became an accountant. Maybe you'd end up hating the guy in the cubicle next to you, but at least your coworker wouldn't be able to make fun of you for liking math or sucking at football.

If Eric and Izzy had been allowed to work together, they could have avoided some of the harassment that they suffered every day at the hands of Edward and Tyler. Not that Eric and Izzy were friends. They'd exchanged barely two words outside of class and Eric thought that Izzy was a spaz at the very least. Though if she was supposed to be such a narc, Eric wondered, then why hadn't someone done anything to all of the people who always picked on her? You would have thought that someone as smart as Edward would have figured that one out, but no. Eric knew why she kept her mouth shut. Shame.

Mr. Banner's lecture finally droned to a close—like you really needed to be told not to throw acid at each other—and they lined up to pick their supplies. It was like being in kindergarten: Don't run with the safety scissors!

Tyler didn't even bother getting up, which was fine with Eric, who was setting up the equipment. Eric felt strangely chipper, picturing Dr. Jekyll experimenting with his phials and powders. Pouring some liquid into a test tube, Eric imagined himself speaking in the doctor's place as the latter confessed how "the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm."

Eric questioned whether he would ever be brave enough to carry out an experiment like Dr. Jekyll had, imbibing a concoction with the power to transform the drinker into someone else, like LSD only stronger. It might be nice to be someone else for a change though. A monster, maybe, but it wasn't as if Eric thought that Dr. Jekyll was really responsible for any of Hyde's crimes.

Eric pictured himself laboring at a workbench for days until he had, "late one accursed night…compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion." Eric studied the equipment before him, wishing that something more interesting would happen than the sizzle of a state-sanctioned experiment gone right.

'That would be something, wouldn't it?' Eric thought. He looked around the classroom. He'd get his revenge then. He wouldn't actually hurt anyone, not really. Just get in a punch or two at a few of the guys. See how those cheerleaders liked being taunted for once.

Noting the progress that the other groups had made with their experiments, Eric realized that he was running behind schedule. That was hardly a shock, seeing as how he was working alone, but he was going to have to hurry up. In fact, Edward and Izzy were almost done. Izzy was just starting to carry the cylinder of acid back to the front of class when she stumbled.

"Did you splash some on your face?" Edward asked. Izzy looked back at him, horrified, completely misunderstanding his question, which, to be fair, had been phrased in a somewhat sarcastic tone. Edward stared at her for a second then rolled his eyes and went back to filling in their lab sheet.

Christ, Izzy overreacted sometimes. Not that it was really a surprise considering the way that Edward and the rest of his clique treated her, but still. Eric congratulated himself that he wasn't as far gone as she was. If Tyler had made a crack about Eric spilling acid on his face, Eric would have had a comeback at least. Not that standing up for yourself ever helped. Sometimes it was better to just disappear, like Izzy.

Maybe a potion that would let you disappear. That would be the thing.

 **AN: All of the credit must go to NewTwilightFan for suggesting this "read" on the acid incident.**

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 **Eric: Party at First Beach**

Eric knew it was wrong, but the temptation was just too strong. Cullen's car was just sitting there in the parking lot of the Thrift N'Save.

Edward wasn't even as bad as James—but he was bad enough.

Sitting there on his bike, Eric fiddled with the keys in his pocket, unable to stop himself from wondering how Edward would feel if he was the one being called a homo. And Edward had laughed at James' jokes often enough, hadn't he?

Eric was going to do it! He didn't care how wrong it was!

Looking around to make sure that no one would see him, Eric knelt in front of the car and started with the first letter. He was filled with a wild elation. 'This must be how Hyde felt,' he thought, remembering that story by Stevenson from English class. This was what it was like to live without rules. Pure anarchy.

After all, the rules only protected people like Edward. If Eric had been allowed to fight back—really fight back—he would have gotten his revenge by now.

Eric finished keying the "F" into the side of Edward's car and started on the "A," only to come up short when he heard Edward's voice.

"Whaddya think you're doing?" Edward snarled.

Eric leapt away from the car and threw himself onto his bike, pedaling furiously.

Casting a glance over his shoulder, Eric saw Edward bending over to read the unfinished word scratched into the side of his car. Eric told himself that he didn't care about the consequences. So what if Edward went to the cops? Eric had been very careful not to leave any fingerprints. It was Edward's word against his.

'Who am I kidding?' Eric asked himself. No one would believe him over Edward.

Miraculously, the cops hadn't shown up on Eric's doorstep…yet.

He was surprised to discover how guilty he felt. Eric really couldn't afford to pay for Edward's car to be fixed—and Edward's parents were rich so it wasn't like they couldn't fork over the money. But still.

And feeling guilty just made Eric angry. Why should he feel bad? Edward had deserved it!

But still.

And so Eric had gone back and forth, unable to stop himself from thinking about it.

Maybe he should apologize. Maybe Edward and he could finally bury the hatchet. High school was over, after all. Surely Edward realized that he deserved to have his car keyed and worse. No doubt, that was the reason that the cops hadn't shown up. Edward knew that Eric had a right to his little act of vengeance. So they were even now.

As if anything could make up for the hell that Eric had gone through.

No, Eric had to stop thinking like that.

Tonight there was going to be a bonfire at First Beach. No one had invited Eric, of course, but he'd heard about it. Everyone was going. There was no reason that Eric couldn't go—especially if Edward had decided to forget about the past.

In fact, Eric decided that if he saw Edward at the bonfire, he'd apologize. Maybe not in so many words—in case an apology could be used as evidence against him in court—but he'd say enough to make sure that Edward understood that he was letting go of the past too.

Bygones could be bygones, or whatever.

But Eric felt decidedly out of place once he got to the beach. He hung back until it started to get dark, sitting on a log on the edge of the sand, not wanting to draw any attention. Once it was dark enough that he deemed it safe to venture closer to the festivities, he grabbed a beer and tried to blend in.

It wasn't really working. He kept getting strange looks—but at least no one was actually calling him out. Eric looked around, hoping to see Edward—surprised to realize that he actually wanted to see the jerk—but Edward wasn't there.

Eric threw himself down on the sand at the edge of the light of the fire. This wasn't so bad.

"Hey, you."

Eric turned. "Me?"

"Yeah." A woman was cocking a finger at Eric, as if bidding him to follow her. Eric didn't recognize her.

"What?"

"Come 'ere," she giggled. Was she drunk?

Eric rose uncertainly to his feet as she took off for the brush at the edge of the sand. Eric considered sitting back down but she called out to him to follow, so he lumbered after her.

He paused once he caught up with her. "What do—" he started to ask but was cut off, her mouth crashing into his.

What on earth was going on? She had to be wasted. There was no other explanation. But so what? Eric knew better than to let this go too far. In the meantime, didn't he deserve some fun?

He dropped the bottle of beer and wrapped both arms around her waist.

When suddenly he felt a burning in his gut—

 **AN: The word that Eric was keying into the side of Edward's car? Derogatory term for a homosexual.**

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 **Outtake: Leah at First Beach the night that Tanya was killed**

Sometimes I am not myself. Sometimes I am a little girl, following her father on the beach, making footprints in the sand.

"Are we going to find it today, Leelee," he asks, and I know that we will.

He would make treasure maps for me on my birthday. He drew them on squares of paper, with clues in pirate code and magic words that only some of the older people still understood, so that I would have to ask them, like a detective solving the clues, questioning my witnesses and sounding the words out for them because the syllables were strange in my mouth—I struggled to know my own people's language—and the alphabet that my father had used to write the words out wasn't native to the words themselves.

"These are ghost stories," the old people would say. "The words are ghosts."

'I will be a cemetery caretaker,' I thought.

I watched the merry-makers down on the sand, on my sand, my father's sand. 'Who had invited them,' I wondered, but I knew. Sam, or one of his clique. He would say it was networking, drumming up business for the garage, but tonight was supposed to be about the tribe. Some things ought to be left alone. 'These are magic words. I won't say anymore.'

The magic words and my father's maps always led to some trinket or toy, and once to a beaded necklace that my father had made himself. But the treasure hunts themselves were the real present. His favorite hiding place was the cave on the beach below, a cavern in the very rock face on which I was currently perched. My cave.

I snorted. It wasn't my cave anymore.

There was supposed to be a ceremony for my dead father tonight. A remembrance. Because the old ways weren't entirely lost.

No, not lost. Just broken and thrown out. And I couldn't even blame them for that—the interlopers—when my own people were responsible for inviting them.

Sam. My hands balled into fists.

There was supposed to be a celebration along with the ceremony. So there was plenty of food and drinks. That was how my father would have wanted it—a celebration to honor him, not tear-stained faces and tight lips. But would he have wanted all of these other people here? These people who didn't even know him? Teenagers. Punks. Not that my mother cared. "We have to be welcoming," she'd say. Why? Hadn't we lost enough already?

"You really want to go back in time?" Emily would ask me. "You want to give up tv and books and movies and cars?"

I didn't see the point of living in the modern world when she was going to let Sam beat her up all of the time.

Tonight, getting ready to come to First Beach, my heart had been hurting in my chest. I missed my father.

When I got to First Beach and saw everyone else there, the pain in my chest went away. I felt a fury in all of my limbs. The magic words were supposed to be secret. Not said out loud in front of strangers.

I turned away. I would not be a part of this.

I went into my cave, the cave where my father buried so many treasures for me to find. And I stumbled over two bodies lying in the sand and in the dark.

"Ouch," they cried. "What are you doing here?"

What was I doing here? I was in my cave. I was on my people's beach for a remembrance ceremony for my father.

What were they doing there? They were in my cave. They were on my people's beach having sex in my cave.

I felt sick.

"Come on, Mike," the woman said. "Let's go."

"Jessica," he whined, as if he thought that they should stay and continue having sex after I left.

I couldn't stay, not even after they'd gone. It wasn't my cave anymore.

I went out of the cave and climbed the path up to the top of the cliff and sat down there to stare at the clouds that always covered the stars. I took out the camera that my father had given me, the last treasure he secreted away for me to find before he died, and looked through the lens down at the sand below.

"Make sure you keep track of everywhere we look," my father would say as I trailed after him. I'd have a map that he'd drawn and a pencil, to mark down the spots where we dug, and he'd have a metal detector. "We're going to find that pirate treasure," he'd say. These were the treasure hunts that we did together.

I started taking pictures. Picture after picture of the Forks crowd mixing with the La Push crowd, both of them using the sand as an ashtray and drinking beer—some of them had to be underage—and ruining it. The old people had already left. They must have said the magic words by themselves around the fire and I'd missed it.

I felt my hands shaking with anger and took more pictures. I'd show them to my mother. She and the rest of the council would have to do something then. They couldn't just let this keep happening.

I kept taking pictures until I was out of film. I dropped the camera in my lap and stared at the sky. Sometimes I wished that there were fewer clouds so that I could see the stars.

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I was visiting one of the old people. They taught the everyday words of our language in school but I was practicing so that I could be proficient. "I will teach you the magic words one day," she said.

We were interrupted. Her great-grandson came in and said that there had been a murder. The night of my father's remembrance ceremony, one of the teenagers from Forks was killed in Port Angeles.

'Ill for ill,' I thought. It had been a mistake to invite strangers to First Beach that night, and this was the result.

The police wanted to talk to everyone who had been at the party—my father's ceremony was being called a 'party' now—because everyone needed an alibi.

I wouldn't talk to anyone.

"They just want to know where everyone was," my mother argued.

"I wasn't anywhere," I told her. "No one saw me. Maybe I killed her."

"Don't say that Leah!"

"Maybe I disappeared. Maybe I was like the smoke from my father's bonfire. Maybe I turned into a smoke wolf and flew to Port Angeles and killed that girl."

"Don't you care that a girl was killed?" my mother asked.

"Why should I care about a stranger when no one cares about my father?"

"That isn't true."

"He is listening. He can hear you when you lie."

My mother slapped me. There was a red mark on my face outlining the shape of her hand. I didn't blame her for slapping me. I blamed her for not caring enough about my father or about the tribe to keep strangers out.

I gave the film to Charlie Swan. "That's my alibi," I said. "I was taking pictures."

"These will be really helpful," he said.

I went and sat on the beach where my father and I used to look for treasure. I thought, 'I am not myself. I am something else.'

I laid myself down on the sand. I wondered if I could turn into sand. Turn into tiny grains that would wash out to sea and wash back into shore. Swirl and eddy in the tide pools. Track down through the secret crevices of the earth, where the magic words came from, where I would find that buried treasure for my father.

 **AN: Wikipedia says that the Quileute language is undergoing a revitalization effort and is indeed being taught in the Tribal School. My interpretation of the material available on the Quileute Nation website suggests that they are using a modified English alphabet. Even if they aren't, my assumption is that Henry would have written harder words in transliterated English for his daughter when she was young.**

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 **Tanya the day of her murder**

Thomas de Quincey's disturbance over the knocking at the gate in Macbeth and its connection to the murder of Duncan is of a piece with the modern sentiment over such things. We want there to exist a vast gulf separating the peculiar from the mundane. That is, we want murder and cruelty and all that is tied up with that to be 'peculiar.' We cannot bear the notion that violence is in fact utterly ordinary. The mundane nature of such activity is perhaps the worst aspect of the business.

Tanya saw Edward's Volvo slip down the street and felt a pang. She wasn't happy about breaking up with him. As much as she had mocked Edward in the past, she knew it was really out of spite over the fact that he couldn't save her.

And why did she even need saving? It was her own fault that she'd fallen so low.

Tanya was surprised when she turned the next corner and saw Edward's car idling along the curb. Had he seen her? Did he want to talk?

Her heart in her throat, Tanya approached the car and bent over to look through the window. She squinted at the driver. From a distance it looked like Edward but—

"Get in," the driver said.

"Aren't you—"

"Edward's cousin."

Tanya's mouth fell open. "Edward doesn't have any cousins."

The woman at the wheel—Maria, wasn't her name Maria? James' girlfriend—laughed to herself. It wasn't a pleasant sound. "Family drama."

"Why do you have Edward's car?"

"He loaned it to me. I can take you to him."

Tanya thought about it. "My sisters are waiting for me."

"I can have you back in a couple of minutes."

Tanya knew it was probably a mistake, but she really did want Edward back. Or rather, she wanted Edward to fix everything that was wrong with her life. She wanted someone—anyone—to fix everything for her. Because she couldn't do it by herself.

Tanya opened the door and slid inside.

"Isn't your hair black?" Tanya asked as Maria pulled away from the curb.

"You ever hear of a wig?"

Tanya had never studied Maria very closely and the woman was fond of baseball hats that obscured her hair.

"Why'd Edward give you his car?"

"Why shouldn't he? I'm his cousin aren't I?"

Tanya shrugged.

Maria glanced at her. "Don't you think we look alike?"

Tanya supposed they did. Maria had the same color hair as Edward and a rather mannish jaw. In fact, with her hair trimmed short like this and in that bulky jacket and sunglasses, Maria could almost pass for a guy.

"Where are we going?" Tanya asked.

"The cabin."

"The cabin?" Tanya shook her head. "That's too far away. I need to get back to my sisters."

"Relax, it won't be that long. You'll be back in no time at all. Besides, don't you want to see Edward?"

Tanya took a deep breath. She did want to see Edward. "Did he say anything about me?"

Maria tapped the steering wheel. "He misses you."

"He does?"

"Sure, why not?"

Tanya wanted to believe it was true. So she settled back for the ride, refusing to think about how her sisters were waiting for her. Glancing at the speedometer, she took consolation in the fact that Maria was speeding. This might not take so long after all.

But when they got to the cabin, it didn't seem like anyone was there.

"Where's Edward?" Tanya asked.

"Inside," Maria said, climbing out of the car.

"What's he doing here?" Tanya inquired as she climbed out of the car herself.

"Just hanging out."

That didn't sound like Edward, but Tanya didn't see any point in arguing. She'd see Edward for herself soon enough. She followed Maria up to the door of the cabin.

Maria knocked.

"Why're you knocking?" Tanya asked.

Maria glanced back at her and grinned. "You don't just go barging into someone else's house."

"No one lives here."

Maria pushed the door open and gestured for Tanya to enter. "Sure they do. Hey Edward, doesn't someone live here?"

Eager to see her ex-boyfriend, Tanya rushed through the door. "Edward!" She looked around in confusion. "Where is he?"

She didn't understand. But why should we be shocked at that? There is no vast gulf separating us from the precipice. Tanya had no warning.

Or should we say that she had all the warnings in the world? That she was a fool to have gotten in that car?

Whatever the case, the sudden blow to the side of Tanya's head took her utterly by surprise.

 **AN: Thomas de Quincey "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth"**

 **Totally creepy true story 2old4fanfic shared in response to the above outtake:**

"I used to live at the base of a hairpin turn. Roadwork was done, which only resulted in cars going off the road and into the woods in front of my house instead of up the road. The disturbing thing, besides the frequency of the crashes, was how little noise they made, some quiet crunching, nothing like a car crash in the movies. My neighbor and I even worked out a system, she would check the car and I would call the ambulance. The first time it happened while my husband was home, I ran to the front door saying 'that was a car crashing, call the police' , and he didn't believe me, he didn't think so subtle a sound could be anything significant."

 **For some reason this reminds me of** _ **The Postman Always Rings Twice…**_

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 **Esme, Charlie & Carlisle soon after Bella comes forward to clear Edward of charges the summer after Tanya's murder**

The girl's father is at The Lodge having dinner with the members of The Rotary Club. He thinks they're a bunch of gasbags but it's something that he's got to do.

When he hasn't got much to say and he doesn't laugh at a single one of their jokes, they think it's because he's a tough lawman. They think it's a compliment to their own machismo that a man like him condescends to join their little tete-a-tete.

They go on like that for two hours. Two hours.

When he can't stand it anymore, he tells them that he's got to get home to his daughter and makes his farewells.

He's on his way out of The Lodge when he passes the boy's mother at the hostess' stand.

"Charlie," the boy's mother stops him.

"Esme." He pauses to greet her.

"I'm just waiting for Carlisle to join me for dinner," she says.

The girl's father nods and turns to go.

"Wait," the boy's mother stops him, a hand on his forearm.

He pauses again.

"I just wanted to say," she starts but then hesitates, her eyes darting all around.

He understands. She's grateful for what his daughter did, but at the same time she just wants to forget it all happened.

"I'm so thankful to Isabella," she says.

He nods, hoping that she'll let it go at that.

And like a fool, because she can't not say it, she says, "And after everything Edward did too."

Which takes him aback. He asks her, "What do you mean?"

Her eyes widen fearfully, which makes no sense at all unless—

Unless this boy's mother is admitting that her son is a murderer and that his daughter lied.

"After everything he did," she says.

His heart stops in his chest.

But she continues, "After what he did to Isabella."

He feels a rush of relief and is even wondering to himself how he could have ever suspected his daughter—

Wait. What?

What did Edward do to Bella?

They never dated. Charlie would have known if they had.

At least, he tells himself that he would have known.

But his daughter is such a mystery to him. A thing he doesn't know or recognize or even know how to try to understand. He likes to think that he's given her a safe place to live and food to eat and clothes to wear, as if that is enough. But he knows there's more that a parent's supposed to do. He knows there are things she hasn't told him that he ought to be concerned about. If she were some punk, he'd have no trouble questioning her. Yet this is his own daughter. He doesn't know how to pose questions that aren't laced with threats.

That is a lie. He knows how to coax young women into pressing charges against their abusive boyfriends. He knows how to convince a child to tell him who hurt them.

But he doesn't want to hear those kinds of things from his daughter. He doesn't want to even imagine that it's possible.

Even though he knows. He knows there's something.

He tells himself that he's respecting her privacy. Really, he is just afraid of the truth.

He can ask this boy's mother, though. It wouldn't be the same thing as asking his daughter. He can coax her into telling him the truth. And then he can pretend that he didn't hear it.

He treads carefully. "Bella isn't one to let a grudge stand in her way."

The boy's mother sighs. "I wish Edward would take a leaf from her book." She shakes her head. "Sometimes I don't think that I even know him. The things that he said about Isabella." She clears her throat. "Well, I just couldn't believe it." She seems to decide something, and steels herself before going on. "I want to tell you how sorry I am. I can't believe I didn't know. Carlisle and I are not letting Edward off scot-free, I can promise you. Even after everything with—with Tanya, I still believed in my son. I knew he was innocent. But this—to hear it from his own lips. I am so deeply ashamed. I had no idea. I really fell down on the job as a parent. Really."

He doesn't know what to say. He can't ask any more questions without admitting that he has no idea what she's talking about. And he can't admit that without also admitting what a horrible father he is.

"Well, I appreciate that," he says in the end.

She smiles. "You are just like your daughter. Truly, it's an injustice how people mistake kindness for weakness. It's the exact opposite. It's the bullies"—she snorts indelicately—"the stupid little boys like my son who are the weak ones. Your daughter could have stood by and watched my son go to jail but she's stronger than that. So many people would have wanted revenge. But your daughter has too much character for that."

He cocks his head to the side, thinking it over. "Thank you," he says. He had been pleased that his daughter was willing to come forward—not that he had given her much of a choice—but now he is seeing that there may have been much more to it than he'd imagined.

"Esme," a voice interrupts. The boy's father has appeared.

"Charlie," he says. "It's so good to see you."

They shake hands.

"I'm so grateful to you, well you and Isabella," the boy's father says.

The girl's father shrugs. He doesn't how else to respond.

The boy's father frowns. "And we're making sure that Edward faces repercussions for what he did to Isabella."

Good God, how bad was it?

"I don't know how my own son turned into a bully. That isn't how we raised him."

A bully?

"Do you think that it would help if Edward tried to talk to Isabella? He says that he's tried. But who knows what really happened? He could come over when you're present if you like." The boy's father looks at the girl's father expectantly.

Edward come over? To talk to Bella?

No. Bella wouldn't like that. She would hate it. Of that her father is certain.

The girl's father makes a decision. His face hardens. "I think he's done enough, don't you?"

The faces of the boy's parents fall.

"Look, I know you're doing your best," the girl's father says. "But I have to look out for my daughter's interests. And I think that it's time she just put all of this behind her. No need to open up old wounds." Best she forget everything—her mother, her stepfather, whatever they did to her (something else he hasn't asked about and never will), and everything having to do with Tanya's murder, including, apparently, this boy and whatever it is that he did to her.

The boys' parents nod sadly.

"Well, it's been good seeing you," the girl's father says.

Well wishes are exchanged and they part amicably. So civilized. The way people should behave. Not like rats trapped in a cage cannibalizing each other the way they do in American high schools.

Bella is home when Charlie arrives. He thinks of saying something to her, but she is reading a book on the sofa and he doesn't want to bother her. He clicks on the tv to watch a game and she goes upstairs. He tells himself that it's okay. She is putting it all behind her.

Besides, if there was really something wrong, she'd tell him.

Right?


	2. Chapter 2

**Meyer owns all**

 **Kate, Tanya's sister: After Tanya's murder**

Kate was just happy to be included. None of her friends talked to her anymore. She hoped that would change when school started again, but ever since Tanya died, her friends stopped coming by or calling. She knew that it was probably her fault. Who wants to spend time with someone who just cries all of the time or sits there not saying a word? But she was lonely.

"You comin'?" Jessica asked, smacking a piece of gum.

Kate nodded and slid down out of the truck.

"I don't know," Lauren said. "This is kind of creepy."

Kind of creepy? It was really creepy. It was awful. It was a black whirlpool of despair.

Kate looked around, not saying a word, not because she was brave, but because her throat was so tight that she couldn't breathe. They'd driven out to the cabin.

The cabin. No other qualifier was needed. Everyone knew what "the cabin" meant. The cabin where Tanya was murdered. But even before that, everyone had just called it "the cabin." Kate had heard the place was popular with the in-crowd but she'd never come before. Her sister had always said that she was too young.

Two other trucks were already parked. It was dark, but Lauren had a flashlight.

"Where are they?" Jessica asked.

"They should be inside," Lauren replied.

But it didn't look like there was anyone inside the cabin. The glow of Lauren's flashlight showed the new padlock on the door, the police tape still in place. Lauren looked at the windows but she didn't shine the flashlight through the glass. Kate wondered if she was afraid.

"Gotcha!"

Jessica and Lauren screamed and Kate jumped. Mike and Tyler and the rest of them laughed. Kate didn't know all of their names. Jessica and Lauren cursed at them and Kate pulled the hood of her jacket up even though it wasn't cold.

"We can't get inside," Mike said.

"Duh," Jessica snapped.

"Let's just do it here," said a girl whose name Kate didn't know.

So they sat down right in front of the door with the new padlock. Kate sat with her back to the cabin. She thought that it would be better that way. She didn't want her back to the woods.

Over the top of Mike's head, she could just make out the dark silhouettes of the cars and, beyond that, the black line where the tops of the trees met the sky. There was supposed to be a full moon, but it was cloudy, so it was mostly murky night. The wind blew.

Kate had never used an Ouija board before. They said that she had to be the one to use it because she was Tanya's sister. But it wasn't working. Her eyes were closed and she was concentrating with all her might, and…nothing.

Mike and Tyler were making too much noise. "How come it's not working?"

"Shut up."

"This is stupid."

"Tanya? Who killed you?"

'I miss you,' Kate thought.

The wind made a low moaning noise

"Let's do it with her," Lauren said. "She was our friend."

And so Lauren and Jessica put their fingers on the planchette along with Kate's and, with their help, the planchette started sliding across the board.

"You're moving it!" Tyler accused.

"No I'm not!"

"Who killed you, Tanya?"

The planchette slid towards the letter I.

Kate held her breath. The planchette slid towards the letter Z.

"Isabella Swan," Mike crowed.

"That doesn't make any sense," someone else said. "You're pushing it."

Kate closed her eyes and concentrated. She pictured the cabin behind her. She imagined Tanya standing in the doorway watching them.

That was the last time that Lauren and Jessica invited Kate to go anywhere with them. Kate called and left messages but they didn't call back.

Kate drew an Ouija board on a piece of poster paper and found a bottle cap to use as the planchette. The last couple of letters on Kate's Ouija board were smooshed together, because she'd run out of room, and the bottle cap was from a beer. The ridges hurt a little when Kate pressed down, but that was alright because you weren't supposed to press down hard. "You're supposed to let Tanya move it," she told Irene. They were sitting on the floor of Tanya's bedroom. It was only two o'clock in the afternoon. It was raining and, with the lights out, it was dark enough.

"What should we ask?" Irene asked.

"It doesn't matter. She'll tell us whatever she wants to."

But the bottle cap didn't move.

"Are you concentrating?" Kate asked.

"I am. I am."

If the bottle cap didn't move, that meant that Tanya was really gone, and they needed her. Things might not have been great before, but they were even worse now. Tanya was the one who knew how to take care of them. Their father's moods were always a problem and he was angry all of the time now. He had never hit them. He was still scary though.

"If your mother was here," he'd trail off, trying to stuff a half-empty pizza box into the refrigerator. When it wouldn't fit, he'd start yelling. He'd shove the box in and out of the refrigerator until things started falling out. He would roar and stalk out of the kitchen with the refrigerator door hanging open and food all over the floor. Kate would clean it up.

Ever since Tanya had died, he had started spending most nights at home, and that was nice, but it wasn't as if he was actually spending time with them. He would just sit in the dark and stare at the wall. "Stop your crying," he'd snap at Irene.

Tanya used to take care of them. Kate and Irene had to leave her alone when she had a guest over, but she made sure that they had lunch and home cooked food. She combed their hair and listened to them.

Kate thought it was just the way things were done. Her sister was pretty, so of course she would have lots of boyfriends.

"How come you have so many?" Irene asked Tanya a week before she died. They were all in the kitchen. Tanya was making them spaghetti. "Susie Remick says you can only love one boy."

Tanya didn't answer at first. She paused for a minute, the sauce she'd been stirring bubbling as she stood over the stove, not moving. "I wish mom were still here," Tanya said at last and started stirring again.

Kate missed their mom too but didn't see what it had to do with bringing boys home.

The Ouija board wasn't working. It was as if Tanya didn't have anything to say. Kate knew that couldn't be true. How could their sister leave them?

"You're doing it wrong," Kate accused Irene, taking her finger off of the bottle cap.

"I'm sorry," Irene said, then burst into tears.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Kate was window shopping in Seattle when she saw the photo. She stopped and stared.

"You interested?" a voice asked, and Kate glanced up to see a guy with a box in his hands. "I can take your picture if you want," he said as he struggled with the door.

Kate helped him with the door but lingered in the entrance.

"Come inside," he said.

She hazarded a few steps past the threshold. The walls were covered with framed photos in all manner of styles, but it was the old fashioned ones like the one in the window that interested her. The portraits in sepia and gray tones with the blurred outlines standing behind the people who were posing.

"You into spirit photography?" the guy asked.

"Spirit photography?"

"Ghosts. See?" He pointed at one of the blurred outlines. It looked like a person. Kind of.

Kate didn't know what to say. He couldn't be serious, could he?

"I can take your picture and maybe someone will hitch a ride," he laughed.

Kate didn't think it was funny. She heard a click behind her and she looked back to see that he had a camera aimed at her face.

"You're really photogenic."

She was photogenic. Kate was pretty. Just like Tanya. Sometimes, Kate would put on Tanya's old clothes—they'd never gotten rid of them—and fix her make-up just like Tanya's.

Kate thought that she could probably pass for her sister if she had to.

But none of the pictures that the photographer took that day showed any blurred outlines standing behind Kate. If Tanya was there, the camera wasn't picking her up.

*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.*_.

' _In time it became quite clear that the subject was possessed of a subtle brand of evil, so inherent, so unassuming, so seemingly innocent, that his crimes seemed all the more shocking.'_

Kate read that in a book about a spirit photographer who was tried for fraud in 1905. The prosecution accused the photographer of preying on his victims' grief.

But why shouldn't spirit photography work? You can't destroy matter—Kate remembered that from her science classes. So what happened to people after they died?

The job at the diner didn't pay that well and Kate couldn't ask her father for the money, at least not for a camera. Aro Denali would never win an award for parenthood, especially not now that Irene was acting out.

Kate didn't think that he'd be happy knowing what she wanted a camera for anyway. He didn't like it when they talked about their mom or Tanya.

Kate bought some inexpensive equipment and did a few experiments. It was easy to see how the spirit photographers had faked their pictures. Sometimes her own work came out a little strange. Her tiny bathroom wasn't exactly designed for developing film and she made mistakes sometimes. She'd stare at the resulting images, at the fuzzy details in the corners, trying to reconcile the blurred outlines with Tanya's features.

' _Spiritualists are the most unfairly maligned of creatures. We want only to help our fellow man and we are constantly persecuted for our efforts.'_ — from A Defense of Spiritualism

Kate wondered if some of the spiritualists she read about were crazy. If they actually thought that they were telling the truth.

It was all tricks, though. Table rapping and strings.

She went to a palm reader. The woman said that Kate had suffered a terrible loss at a young age. How could the palm reader possibly know? She must be the real deal, right? The woman said that Kate was shy but likeable.

Shy, yes. Kate wasn't sure about likeable though. She didn't sleep around like Tanya had. A couple of guys in high school had made fun of her, asking why she wasn't more like her sister, but Kate didn't want to make the same mistakes.

Part of her wondered how Tanya could have done all of those things. She wondered whether Tanya had regretted it. She imagined how it must have made her sister feel. So cheap.

The first time Kate stripped it was because Irene needed the money. Their father had thrown Irene out and Irene had moved in with a guy, which would have been fine, maybe, except that the guy she moved in with turned out to be a drug dealer and Irene had stolen his money. Unsurprisingly, he wanted it back.

"What did you do with it?" Kate asked. She couldn't believe that her sister had sunk so low, not even bothering to ask Kate for a place to stay before moving in with this creep.

"I spent it."

"On what?"

Irene just looked at her, so high that she could barely sit up.

Kate had never done anything like stripping before, but she knew that she could maybe make a couple hundred in a single night if she was lucky. One of the other waitresses at the diner had quit and moved to Seattle because she made twice as much money in two nights at one of the strip clubs in the city than she'd made in an entire week in Forks.

'Just one night,' Kate told herself. 'Just to pay off Irene's debt.'

But Kate felt sick when she stepped out under the lights. She looked down at the stage, not wanting to see anyone's face looking back at her. What if someone recognized her?

A voice jeered. She wasn't dancing yet. She was just standing there.

She wanted to turn around and leave, but she had to take care of her sister, just like Tanya had always taken care of them.

Kate closed her eyes and imagined Tanya standing behind her, a blurred outline keeping her company. 'I'm not alone,' Kate thought to herself. 'I'll never be alone.'

In point of fact, it took Kate several nights to make enough money to pay off Irene's debt. By then, she had decided to quit her job at the diner and move to Seattle.

It was a change of pace, to be sure, but she never went home with the customers. She wasn't like that. Stripping was just like any other job. Besides, it wasn't like she was qualified to do much else.

And it meant that she was able to invest in much more sophisticated camera equipment. Maybe she'd even open her own photography shop one day. She'd hang a picture of Tanya in the window. It would make people want to come inside.

' _Posing for the portrait, I sensed almost immediately that I had been joined by the spirits of my deceased daughters. Tears sprung to my eyes as I realized that I was reunited with the dear souls from whom I had been so cruelly parted. I observed the photographic processes being carried out before me and knew that I would forever cherish the irrefutable evidence that it would provide me of my children's continued survival in the hereafter.'_ – from Testimony at the Trial of D— S—, reputed spirit photographer and charlatan

 **AN: The "quotes" from texts on spiritualism are "fake," having been composed by author-self-insert based on actual documents related to study and prosecution of spiritualists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Meyer owns all**

 **Jasper: From high school to the happy hour at the beginning of Gothic**

"Com'mere boy," Jasper's uncle said. "You sit here and listen to this."

Jasper didn't know what a "Jelly Roll Morton" was. He didn't much care for the music either, all of the notes spilling into the air and hanging there for a second before they meandered lazily down the garden path and out of the gate and over the fields overgrown with thorny vines and wild flowers.

Jasper was more of a "Down with the Sickness" kind of a guy. But he liked his uncle, who was also named Jasper. "You may call me Jass," his uncle would say to the ladies, tipping his hat.

Jasper refused to believe what aunt Trilby had said about the man. "Ain't got no right to the Georgia home," she'd slurred drunkenly one Christmas in Texas, where most of the family now lived. "Someone like that."

Jass was just genteel, Jasper told himself.

So genteel, in fact, that when Jasper and Edward passed through Georgia visiting colleges, Jass offered them accommodations in the crumbling old plantation house that was "the family manse." Jass put Edward to work right away though. "Got to earn your keep," Jass said, directing Edward to sit at the piano. Jasper didn't recognize the noises coming out of the instrument, but Jass didn't seem to mind, laughing happily at the madcap rhythm. His joy was so infectious that soon Jasper was laughing too.

The next morning, Jasper wandered into the kitchen and heard his uncle's voice outside. Glancing through a window, he saw his uncle talking to a fellow that Jasper didn't recognize. Jasper quickly jerked back from the window. His uncle had been holding the man's hand.

Jass entered the kitchen a few minutes later. "An' I spose you think I should feed you 'fore you go," he lilted pleasantly as he opened the refrigerator. "'Can't be nobody," Jass crooned softly. "Can't even be myself."

"Why not?" Jasper asked.

"Hmm?" his uncle asked.

"Why can't you be yourself?"

Jass cocked his head to the side. "Oh, the feller in the song is a wanted man. He's livin' unda an alias." He started singing again.

Jasper and Edward left a few hours later. It was the last time that Jasper saw his uncle alive.

Jasper wasn't afraid of anything. It wasn't true bravery, because he didn't have to overcome any qualms to go after the things he wanted. He just took them.

Like the time that he totaled his car. As his car spun around—it was all so fast—he didn't even have time to be afraid. He just thought, 'so this is what it's like.'

Hence Jasper didn't understand why other people had so much trouble facing their fears. Screw convention. Screw aunt Trilby.

Jasper was just starting his second semester of college when he received a phone call telling him that his uncle had been beaten to death outside of a bar. Jasper left immediately. He knew that he could talk his teachers into letting him make up the work.

The funeral was hell. Jasper's cousins and uncles and aunts were running all over his uncle's house. People that he knew had never bothered to visit Jass while the man was still alive. And Jasper didn't care for the way that some of them were speculating about how the murder—yes _murder_ , didn't they get that?

Aunt Trilby was the worst. "Just like his unca, I reckon," she whispered spitefully about Jasper at the funeral. She didn't quite say that Jass had gotten what he deserved, but it was understood.

Jasper waited a few weeks before he called Edward to give him the news. Jasper admitted to himself that the delay was partly out of spite. Edward and his uncle had gotten along so well—"famously," as his uncle had put it.

Yet the conversation went exactly the way that Jasper had expected. Edward expressed sympathy alright, but then it was all about _him_ again and _his_ problems. For once, Jasper wished that Edward would realize that he wasn't the center of the universe.

When Edward was arrested, Jasper had flown home to help. Jasper had gone around with Edward to question Felix and Dimitri and all of the other jerks on Edward's so-called suspect list. Just once Jasper wished that Edward could be there for him.

Jasper didn't go so far as to cut ties with Edward, but he didn't make much of an effort after that to keep up the friendship.

Five years later, Jasper was flying to Chicago for a conference and decided to shoot Edward an email. "Stay with me," Edward replied. Jasper was surprised by the offer but pleased.

Esme had looked so mournful the last time Jasper was in Forks. "Edward hasn't been home recently," she'd said when Jasper ran into her by chance at the market. "And he's always so busy."

Jasper acknowledged that he was at least partially responsible for the fact that his friendship with Edward had lapsed. He thought it was time to rectify that.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature conspired to put a spanner in the works. Jasper had planned to swing by the "family manse" before flying to Chicago, just to make sure that the crumbling of that old edifice had been kept to a minimum, "southern gothic" not yet having descended into "unlivable." But the flight to Georgia was cancelled because of weather, so he flew directly to Chicago, arriving two days early. He left a voicemail for Edward, who had already warned Jasper that he would be pretty busy working. Jasper didn't think that Edward would mind that he was arriving early.

Jasper took a cab to Edward's apartment and was fortunate to find Edward's roommate at home. The roommate let Jasper into the apartment and directed him towards Edward's room, where he said that Edward had a sofa for Jasper to sleep on. And after warning Jasper that he didn't know when Edward was going to be home, the roommate left.

So Jasper was all alone in the apartment when he opened the door to Edward's room.

'No,' Jasper thought. This couldn't be right.

The walls were literally covered with notes and maps and lists. Photos of the cabin and Tanya and Edward's old car.

Jasper had an urge to tear it all down. He hadn't any right to do so—but this wasn't normal. If Edward would just listen to Jasper—

But no. No one ever listened to Jasper.

"You're early," Edward gasped raggedly behind Jasper, clearly having rushed up to the apartment.

Jasper gazed at his old friend, recognizing the general outlines of the figure before him, the same regular features, but not the wild glint in the eye, the obvious anxiety in the twitching limbs.

"What is this?" Jasper asked.

Edward shook his head, still trying to catch his breath. "I don't know what you mean."

"You're kidding me."

"You're early. I was going to take it all down."

"So you _know_ it's messed up," Jasper confirmed.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Get over it," Jasper said. It was as easy as that.

"I can't."

Jasper shook his head but he didn't walk out.

They did a better job of keeping up their friendship after that, and a few years later, when Jasper learned that he was working at the same university as Izzy, his first thought was to tell Edward.

His second thought was to keep his mouth shut. Jasper didn't want to do anything that might encourage Edward to remember anything associated with Tanya.

Jasper couldn't help being surprised though, by how much Izzy seemed to have changed. It was evidence, Jasper decided, that people could do whatever they wanted.

What he didn't understand, was why Izzy wanted nothing to do with him. Everyone liked Jasper. He was a charmer, just like his uncle. He didn't get it.

It was Jasper's dismay over Izzy's obvious distaste for him, more than anything else, that prompted him to mention her to Edward. Jasper knew that he should just be happy that Edward was condescending to come out for a beer. But he could tell that Edward didn't want to be there. Jasper had already tried talking baseball and football. He'd asked about Edward's family and work. He'd gotten nothing but one word answers and a shrug or two in return.

Jasper sighed. "Guess who I'm working with."


	4. Chapter 4

**Meyer owns all**

 **Edward: From Tanya's death to the happy hour at the beginning of Gothic**

Edward didn't understand why the police were talking to him again. Or why his so-called lawyer was letting them do it. He'd spent two nights in jail. He'd been arraigned. They were going to try him for Tanya's murder. He was wearing an ankle bracelet to keep him from fleeing.

"What's your relationship with Isabella Swan?" the detective asked.

Izzy? "Is she dead too?" Edward asked, unable to stop himself. Jesus, if she was, he was over. No one would believe he was innocent.

"Just answer the question."

"We went to school together."

"You ever date her?"

What? "N-no."

"You ever hang out? Smoke a joint? Anything?"

"We were lab partners once, that's it."

When they told him that the charges were being dropped because Izzy had given him an alibi, he put his head in his hands and wept.

 _He knew._

Edward knew that Izzy hated him. And yet he sought her out, to thank her.

He wasn't surprised by her response.

He walked out of the diner, James laughing and oblivious up ahead. Edward glanced back at the diner, at Izzy in one of the booths, and collapsed.

When Edward came to his senses, he was sitting on the ground behind the diner. He was leaning against the dumpster, bubble gum and unwholesome things stuck to the ground around him and he didn't care, sitting there against the filthy metal. Only the chill in the air kept him from vomiting.

That was the first day that Edward had dared go anywhere in Forks after the charges were dropped. At first, he'd stayed home, spending most of his time at his piano, his fingers staggering across the keys. Broken notes clanging. A thousand aberrations surging against the harmony.

And all along he could feel his parents hovering.

"Why did it take that girl so long to come forward?" his mother complained.

"She didn't have to come forward at all," he said.

"Why would you say that Edward?" his father demanded.

Ignoring his parents' protests, he fled the house, and went hiking. He repeated his hike from the day that Tanya was murdered, going all the way to the meadow and sitting on the cold ground. He wondered if Izzy would appear, even though it was almost midnight. Was she somewhere in the woods? Did she come here often? Why hadn't she said something to him that day, to let him know that she was there?

He looked up at the sky. The light of the stars was dim, the radiance trembling, flickering as if a whisper of breath might cause them to be extinguished. Had they always been so weak? He'd sat in this very spot countless times, watching the night sky, marveling at the same stars, the shards of bright light. Now it was as if he was looking at them through a blanket. He could hardly see.

He went home and told his mother in excruciating detail exactly why he had no right to expect anything from Izzy. His mother didn't speak to him for two days. "How could you?" she asked him at last. He didn't have an answer.

Edward decided that there was something wrong with him. How else was he to explain it? His ex-girlfriend had been murdered, and all fingers pointed to him. His best friend had betrayed him, dealing drugs out of the apartment that they shared, and now the police were looking at him again with suspicion in their eyes.

Edward knew it was a mistake, but he hooked up with some guys from his program who were going to Mexico for spring break. They were trashed before their plane even took off.

It didn't take long for the partying to wear on Edward. He went to the train station and purchased a ticket to a town in the middle of nowhere. When the train stopped, Edward staggered out of the station, a little hung over still, and stared. It was barely a town, barely a square mile of modest clapboard houses and businesses and straggling vegetation. And it was surrounded by a vast, dry emptiness. There was only desert in the distance.

Ignoring the wondering glances from the locals, Edward set off for the tallest building in town, its rooftop cross easy to pick out in the midst of so much squalor. It was a plain church. Squat and simple. A false pediment rose from the front, with the cross at its peak, the sole attempt at opulence. The severity of the place, and the poverty of the surrounding town, suddenly made Edward uneasy. What was he doing there?

He walked slowly around the far side of the church, pausing beside the jumble of gravestones, and stared.

She stood on a small pedestal, in a clutch of graves, her arms held out as if to comfort the dead. He thought at first that the woman was alive, the likeness was so true, from the kindness in her expression to the grace of her pose. Her hands too, the fine fingers curved in a delicate gesture, posed to brush perhaps a burning brow, wipe away an errant tear, they were almost human. If only a lock of hair would escape the statue's cowl, he was sure it would curl over her shoulder in a soft wave.

He hesitated at the edge of the graveyard, reluctant to venture any closer to the statue, as if she might startle into flight. He felt a strange sensation gradually steal over him. It wasn't peace, but it was close to it.

No one bothered him there in the graveyard. The sun slowly began to set, the sky an orange-pink wound. When night fell, the statue shone, absorbing the light of the moon—giant in the vast emptiness—and radiating it back. The angel glowed.

The next day, he took the train to an airport and returned to school early.

Edward stared down at the staring eyes. They gaped, bulbous in the bloated flesh. The man had only been dead five minutes and already he'd taken on a waxy sheen. But he'd come in already half-dead. The end was inevitable, even as Edward had applied the paddles to his gray chest.

Edward was alone with the corpse now. Everyone else had left the room, hurrying away because they had other cases, or wanting to distance themselves from the miasma of decay. All the frenetic energy expended to keep this man alive, stilled in an instant, as if it had never happened. Just like this man's life.

Edward stared down at him. The whites of the man's eyes were milky swirls, the blackheads on his bulbous nose were dark pits, and the flabby flesh of his lips was a meaty paradise.

He was utterly grotesque.

He was utterly fascinating.

Staring down at the body, Edward forgot, for a whole thirty seconds, that there was an Edward. There was only the dead man and his spider veined skin.

A nurse burst through the doors and froze.

"Dr. Cullen, your shift was over fifteen minutes ago."

"Was it?"

She nodded dumbly.

Edward glanced down at the corpse and sighed.

"You did everything you could to keep him alive," she reassured him.

A strange gurgling sounded from Edward's chest and he jerked away from the table. Of course he'd done everything he could to keep the man alive. Was there any question of that?

Edward hurried towards the locker room, remembering that he was supposed to be meeting Jasper for drinks. Jasper was going to tell Edward all about his new job at the university.

 _You don't have to_ be _normal_ , Edward promised himself as he slammed his locker shut. _You only have to_ act _normal._

He could do that, couldn't he?


	5. Chapter 5

**Meyer owns all**

 **Freshman Year of college**

 **Outtake: excerpts from Bella's diary freshman year of college**

August 20

Moving in to the dorm today. Told C that I had someone to help me. I can hear people moving outside my door.

I haven't heard from Alice yet.

August 22

Have met my roommate.

I will try.

August 24

My roommate has a boyfriend who is a junior and she spends most of her time with him. It's just as well. She always asks me what I've been doing since she saw me last.

I don't know what to say.

August 30

This morning, my horoscope said that I would be popular with friends. If there's anything at all to astrology, I'm nonetheless certain that the stars can only exert an influence if you subject yourself to the caprice of the world, but a person has no choice about such things when she's forced to share her living quarters. And it reminds me of Alice.

So perhaps it was my horoscope, or the way sunlight came through our window, in any case, I let her greedy hand snatch the book from me.

September 1

My roommate has introduced me to some of her friends and made me eat dinner with them. I am sure that my roommate would vouch for all of them, but she is a book thief.

She proved it, too, showing them the book that she'd taken from me. Told them it was by the brother of an alchemist. Then, at their bidding, like a dancing monkey, I recited for them, ' _Quite spent with thoughts, I left my cell and…I summoned nature pierced through all her store, Broke up some seals which none had touched before; Her womb, her bosom, and her head Where all her secrets lay abed, I rifled quite and…I did find A piece of much antiquity, With hieroglyphics quite dismembered, And broken letters scarce remembered. I took them up and, much joyed, went about To unite those pieces, hoping to find out The mystery; but this ne'er done...I'll…most gladly die.'_

What does it mean? they asked.

Nature's book, I told them, with her secrets laid out.

They all laughed.

I wish I hadn't let my roommate take my book.

September 5

He is bored and talks over our responses, not giving us time. But nor is he hard on us. He goes from student to student, telling us he'll go to the next when we struggle over the text. Some of them are very stupid.

I do Latin conjugations just to pass the time.

amo amas amat amamus amatis amant

Wish I could go hiking in La Push.

October 2

Am sitting in the quad working on chemistry, and can see a woman who looks just like a friend of my mother's, glancing right at me and then away again, muttering to herself. It's pissing me off.

…Waited until I had to go to class then walked up to her. Had to say sorry, that I thought she was someone else. It wasn't her.

Now I've come to the coffee shop to write. The salesgirl tells me the place has been open as long as the school. As if I care.

October 12

Two subscriptions! Two! And for fifty-six goddamn dollars. Too much, I almost said, he wanted too much. But for his force of personality I would have walked away. Fifty-six dollar! Conman! And it's a sign, Alice would say so, this conman trying to sell me magazines for fifty-six dollars and asking me if I was dating—selling a lie—and me going along with it merely because it made me think: I can find like-minded people, my people. He hugged me before I could go, and never gave me a receipt. He was clever, and innocuous (from the Latin: nocere).

I was afraid to say no. As if doing so would actually hurt him.

Today's horoscope: _You may stumble around in a fog_ (every day of my goddamned life) _but beware of tricksters_ (thanks!). _Take a load off_ (collapsing in exhaustion, only to have horrible nightmares). Still haven't heard from Alice.

October 31

If I ever disappear, the police will come and look at all of my books—and books and books—and papers. They will consider these books the symptom of an affliction. Yet my books will be the only things to bear witness to me.

November 10

Tonight, I found out what my roommate's friends really think of me.

I miss Alice.

November 24

C is working. Why did I come home for Thanksgiving if he is just going to work?

I've come to La Push and am sitting on the beach. So cold—see my hand shaking with cold. My handwriting a squiggle across the page. Like bird tracks in the sand.

The sea out of focus turns from grey to aqua in patches, blinking in and out like video feed, then the sand starts doing it too.

November 26

Went hiking yesterday. Wish I could turn into a tree and stay.

S told me today that a native woman was killed somewhere in these woods once. A hunter mistook her for a wild animal and shot her.

December 5

Today, a policeman accused me of being homeless when he found me wrapped in a blanket on the quad, sitting in the snow with my Tennyson.

December 8

I hear that wheedling sweet voice and I know that my roommate wants something.

December 13

Cannot study. Walk down aisles of library, pulling down volumes at random.

It's all because of this:

' _So it was that I first laid eyes upon the Creature, the like of which could scarcely be classified, more like unto beast was he.'_

Read it by mistake and now can do nothing.

December 19

Have returned home. C's left already. Snow—can't hike.

December 20

C's working. Tried reading. It's no good. Snow—can't hike.

December 21

Cleaned. Can't hike. C's working.

December 22

Hiked today.

Banks of snow stood milky white against brown leaves, and the light was blue, like the shadows on a plum. I was about halfway down a not so barren slope, pines and other trees further on, with the leafless limbs of the latter affording sight of some distant hills coming together in a narrow pass, and through the pass, I could see a low plain, rust-brown with winter-tired trees. At the base of the slope, there was a stream rushing with melt-water. Silver water flashed in the uneven light. And there was a dark form stirring by the stream. A wolf. Swinging his head from side to side. As I watched, the wolf suddenly hunkered down, hunting, I thought, for a rabbit, or some other small prey. But then, rising to his full height, he swung his head around and up, scanning the whole of the slope. He hardly hesitated when his eyes fell on me.

You'd think I wasn't even there.

December 24

Went to Port Angeles, thinking stupidly that I could blend in with the crowds, as if I was one of them. Used book store: classics of the noir and detective genre.

December 25

C didn't like the Dashiell Hammett, though he pretended that he did. Hammett was a Communist, he said. Didn't I know?

February 10

I'm sure that I'm failing this class. I wish that I could just walk out, walk out, walk out—

Walk out of everything.

 _Any other questions? Any other questions?_

A girl in the next row over is breathing hard. She asks such insipid questions.

February 22

My roommate is fighting with her boyfriend. I stay in the library for as long as I can, avoiding her.

February 23

Today I saw something strange.

 _Coincidence_ , I thought to myself, steering over the cracked pavement and out onto the uneven stonework of the roadway. _Augury by birds a nonsense superstition._

April 3

Haven't gone to class for a week. Spend every day in the library. Pulling down books and looking at what I find there. Divination via volumes opened at random and the lines read therein. It doesn't mean anything. I know it.

But I cannot stop.

April 5

Have gone back to class because I think that I will have to kill myself if I don't.

Sit here thinking _If only I could peel off all of my skin._

May 1

Alice's mother has called. Alice is sick. She will be enrolling here in the fall.

Alice's mother wants us to get an apartment together.

And all I can think is that I can't let them see me like this.

 **AN: The poetry is Thomas Vaughan's** _ **Vanity of Spirit**_

 **Outtake: Alice, freshman year of college**

Alice had gone to the wrong class again, and she stared at the teacher, his features obscured, as if Alice was under water, watching him from below.

She shuffled into the hallway and slumped against the wall. She fumbled with her backpack, pulling open pockets and tearing at zippers, searching blindly until she found her schedule.

When she got to the correct class, the teacher didn't even bother looking up. And when the class was over, Alice sat at her desk until the next class started.

Alice went a week like that. It would have been longer, maybe forever, but sometimes a wave would break in a way that she hadn't expected and she would suddenly be above the surface, fully exposed, blinking in the frigid light, frozen for a second before comprehension could set in and she could dive back under the water, escaping.

Those moments of exposure were plagued by such _clarity_ that it stung.

Under the water there was nothing. Emptiness. Above the water, there were memories and speculations and _clarity_.

One time, a wave broke the wrong way and Alice found that she'd surfaced. She realized that it was a Friday and that she was in Calculus and that she'd just finished taking a test.

When Alice found herself vomiting in the bathroom, she realized that it should bother her that she couldn't recall how she'd gotten from Calculus to that bathroom stall. When she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the mirror over the sink, she remembered what it felt like to forget, and she dove.

She stayed down for hours. There was nothing and nothing and nothing.

Alice sat bolt upright in the cab of a truck. She gasped for air.

She didn't know where she was or who the truck belonged to.

Her scalp was hurting and she realized that it was because she was clutching at her hair. She let go of her hair and felt her forehead, damp with a cold sweat. Her hands were shaking.

This was terror.

And just as quickly as she realized that, there was a click and she felt nothing again. Click. Nothing. Calm.

This was insanity.

Realizing the severity of the situation then, she tried. She tried to recall everything that had happened during the past week.

But the walls dripped down long colors.

 _And do we bend then and say '_ Enough.'

Slowly, the cracks and splinters gave way to smooth grooves. Rough gouges worn down until they were soft. Damage made pliable.

It was strange—a part of Alice noted just how strange it was—that the grain of the wood should pose such an interesting subject to her. Ridges and whorls like waves. Yet the wood was hard. Unbudging and painful beneath her. Not like water at all.

She was lying on the floor of her dorm room. Alice rested her palm against the floor and stroked the grain.

These are the things that she noticed: Light coming through the window, dust motes hovering in the air, shadows creeping across the walls. Day, night. Day, night. She stared at the gaping mouth of her window. After a while, her mouth burned with thirst. She fumbled in the dark, trying to rise, too thirsty not to try. She drank, bent over the sink, her mouth beneath the faucet. She drank until she was still thirsty but no longer thirsty enough to make the effort worthwhile. She lay down again. Dust motes. Shadows. Night. She felt a sensation like drowning. The pressure on her chest. The struggle as this foreign thing—air, it was air—tried to force its way down her throat. Breathing. In and out. Small gasps.

By the time Alice realized what they were doing, they'd nearly completed their project, going through her possessions. _Thieves._

Alice opened her mouth to scream. No sound came out. Was she dead then? She tried and tried, _needing_ to get sound out of her chest. She heard a whining. Just air escaping through her throat. A howl.

Slow motion. She was moving in slow motion, underwater, fighting against the current as it tried to pull her back. The entire episode must have lasted no more than a few minutes. Yet it felt to Alice like hours as she fought the weight of the water, struggling to throw off the strange shackles.

She waved her arms, fighting against the current. Then she had launched herself at the thieves.

Her clothes were in the air, flying. Birds on the tops of the waves, taking to frenzied wing.

She had one of her suitcases in her hands and was tearing out the contents.

There was someone screaming. It was Alice. The gross cries of a pelican splitting the rotten sea air.

Tentacles scrabbled for purchase against her flesh. Her parents, trying to grab at her arms. Trying to calm her down.

 _I won't leave_ , she thought _. They can't make me._

Manacles slid around her wrists, someone's hands trying to restrain her. Alice jerked away, desperate, struggling with all of her strength.

Did she try to punch her own father? She scratched at his hands. He twisted her arms behind her torso and the pain brought tears to her eyes. Alice's knees hit the ground as she crumpled, hyperventilating, gasping for air as she drowned, her father holding her well above the water, where she couldn't breathe, where she was dying. She fought. Was there any other choice? She couldn't breathe. Couldn't be. So she fought, struggling with her father long past the point where exhaustion should have forced her to collapse.

She stopped, finally, too tired to fight anymore, and caught sight of herself in the mirror over her roommate's desk.

Locks of hair stiff and unwashed, spiking around her head, snakes. Face red and swollen, blotchy patches of white. Lips sneering. Fingers like claws. And clothing strained, exposing long swathes of skin. Indecent. A madwoman.

She still felt like she was underwater, but only barely. Sounds only slightly muffled and vision barely stymied. There was a world, a whole world, above the water, she knew. She could see the outlines, wavering and blurred by ripples on the surface of the water. And she didn't want to be able to see it. She didn't want to be able to make out sound. She wanted to stay exactly where she was. Even if it meant that she was dead.

It occurred to Alice that she would have to compromise. She would have to surface from time to time, to look around and get her bearings, perform whatever task was wanted just then. Otherwise, they'd reach under the water and pull her out against her will, haul her into the cold and into the air that drowned. Into sensation.

It was such a delicate task, hovering just below the surface of the water so that she could surface occasionally. She wanted nothing more than to sink, to retire into the warmth and escape. But knowing the punishment for doing so, she hovered.

"How are you Alice?" her parents asked when they came to see her in the hospital.

"Are you doing ok Alice?"

"What really happened Alice?"

Each of these little blossoms of uncertainty became in and of itself a Zen koan of ambiguity. Was Alice ok? Of course not.

She told herself that she ought to appreciate their concern.

Bella visited Alice in the hospital too. The nurse told Alice that she had a visitor, "A Miss Bella Swan."

" _BellaSwanBellaSwanBellaSwan_ ," sang one of the delinquents and Alice wondered if the nurse would be able to stop her from putting out the delinquent's eyes.

But then Alice caught sight of Bella's face. Of the expression on Bella's face.

For just an instant, Alice considered telling Bella to go. To just go and never come back.

Then, even worse, Alice considered showing Bella just how bad it could be. Funhouse games. Show-my-crazy in the House of Warped Mirrors. Dark shadows leering from every corner, seven other patients in the ward, seven looking glasses, all fractured portraits of Alice, misshapen approximations of humanity. Criminals and attempted suicides and misbegotten creatures.

Then Bella said "I've missed you so much."


	6. Chapter 6

**Meyer owns all**

 **Graduate Years**

 **BPOV**

I'd been told that the job was perfect for a new graduate student. Dr. Volturri was an expert. As his research assistant, I'd learn a great deal, even if I wasn't studying the Ummayids or Abassids.

In preparation, I checked out all of Irfan Shahid and Fred Donners's books, as well as _Emotional Intelligence for Dummies_ , and a slew of other tracts all promising to show Pinocchio how to be a real boy.

I knew that I'd been doing better, but the odd looks I sometimes still got from people and the freezing terror I felt now and then told me that I still had work to do.

Alice eyed my mountain of "research" wearily but said nothing, knowing damn well that she'd take a bunch of ridiculous self-help books over mind-blurring drugs and a visit to the psych ward any day.

My first day, she approved my outfit, asked again if I was sure about going back to school—'I like it,' I reminded her—and sent me on my way.

Dr. Volturri was leaving his office when I arrived. I dug my fingernails into my palm, trying to sound confident as I introduced myself and shook his hand. I still wasn't able to quite meet his eye.

"I'm going for some tea," he said. "D'you want some?"

I declined, and sat down to wait, perching stiffly in the chair as though afraid Dr. Volturri had set up a camera to see if I would do anything untoward in his absence. Ten minutes later, I was still sitting primly, my shoulders aching with tension. I'd been mentally reviewing Latin grammar to pass the time, and had already run through both conjugations _and_ declensions.

Bored, I stood up to inspect Dr. Volturri's shelves, hoping he wouldn't mind. I'd only a smattering of the basics with regard to the Middle East, yet a title caught my eye.

I knew it was wrong, but casting a glance over my shoulder to assure myself of privacy, I picked one of the volumes up and ran my fingers over the grooves made by the gilt lettering on the binding.

Opening at random, I was taken aback by what I saw. Curving, looping script in what looked like gold leaf. Letters like musical notes.

Returning the book to its shelf, I examined the rest of the offerings, scanning the sprawling script on the covers. I recognized Arabic. Latin. Greek. Something that I thought was Persian.

My hand rose unbidden. I pulled down a tea-colored volume, the cover crinkling. I read: ' _From sin I will retire, from song and poetry_.' I snapped that volume closed and returned it to its shelf. Another volume: ' _Was it made by man for demon or for demon by man?'_ Another: ' _The booksellers were made to swear…_.'

I slowly began pulling down one after another.

I paused when I found the bundle of yellowed letters tucked inside one of the volumes—right at Abu Nuwas' quarrel with his boy (' _I'm so depressed I've almost run out of lust'_ )—addressed to _Dear Stefan_ and signed, absent any salutation, _Vladimir_. I tried averting my eyes from the text, but I was too late.

Returning both letters and volume to the shelf, I pulled down another book. '… _all the waists like reeds and shanks like papyrus_.'

"Heady stuff," I heard behind me. "Imru' al-Qays was a rake." I whirled around, embarrassed to have been discovered thus.

Dr. Volturri laughed away my distress. "I'm glad to see you enjoying yourself. D'you know anything about Imru' al-Qays?"

I shook my head.

He waved me into a seat as he settled into his own. "Poet-seducer, infamous for sneaking into other men's tents. He wrote of a ruined campsite, '… _by the edge of the desert between Ed-Dakhool and Haumal.'_ A ruined love. The intensity of his passion signified by absence of his lover. And then there's a storm. Symbolic of Byzantium surely. According to legend, Imru' al-Qays was assassinated on the orders of a Byzantine emperor, the father of one of his conquests."

I couldn't help wondering about those letters addressed to Dr. Volturri. Love letters.

" _Stop_ ," Dr. Volturri said, "' _Stop, both companions. Weep, reminded of a passion and a home by the edge of the desert between Ed-Dakhool and Haumal._ ' Grief. Second nature to a people who gave their deity an empty throne and a name that wasn't a name."

An empty throne? I didn't understand.

"It's a whole world apart," he continued, "from people who claim that God is something that ' _can be_.' That is, it's but a step away from a ruined campsite and a lost love to a medieval saint stuck through with a hundred golden shafts of light, divine passion."

That garish image of St. Teresa of Avila flashed through my mind.

He went on. "But I've always been prone to grant the truth, if not the justice, of that strange decision from Capellanus' court. You know the one, where the wife is told that she must go on loving her former lover even though she's married, and once she gets rid of her husband and marries her lover, she's warned off him too."

I hadn't read Capellanus either.

"We aren't meant to have what we want. An empty throne. A standing ruin. _Jahaliyya_. It's what's lost."

I blinked, imagining a windswept desert and the tatters of some tents.

"Have you any familiarity with _The Fihrist_?" he asked, shifting topics.

"Ibn al-Nadim's book catalogue," I replied, having come across it in my research.

"That's right," Dr. Volturri smiled. "That's what we'll be working with. Books. And those susceptible to their charms. Are you? Susceptible to the charms of a book?"

I swallowed. "I—" I stuttered. "I _like_ books."

"People complain that Ibn al-Nadim was biased. That he only cared about books written in Arabic. But why should he read anything else? Everything of note—Plato, Aristotle, the rest—was being translated into Arabic. He was like an American. How many of us only know English? The world comes to us."

I nodded though I knew that he didn't really mean it. No true scholar could condone reading a text in anything but the original language. It would be like—

Like making love through an interpreter.

Dr. Volturri glanced at the book still in my hand. "Ibn al-Nadim acquired books for those who liked to read. An illicit occupation. So selfish. Reading, that is. And collecting. Utterly self-gratifying. The pursuit of pleasure-seeking hedonists."

Like masturbation? I hadn't thought of it like that before.

Dr. Volturri nodded. "And Ibn al-Nadim was their pimp."

I looked down, trying to hide my surprise at his language.

"Let's begin," Dr. Volturri said, gesturing to me, "with Imru' al-Qays. With his seduction of a woman who lived in that camp before it fell to ruin."

Sitting there, in Dr. Volturri's office, I felt my pulse begin to race with something other than anxiety.

There would come a time, after I'd met Dr. Volturri's son, when I would ask myself if working for Dr. Volturri had been a mistake.

But that would be much later. That first time in Dr. Volturri's office, I had felt only—or rather, I had simply felt. That is, I'd done nothing but feel, and so very much so. He just had so many books that I'd never read.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

A bell rang out as I pushed the door open. There were books stacked in piles in the entryway, an obstacle course to deter the fainthearted. I skirted around them and went down the first row of shelving, then turned to the right, knowing that I could lose myself in here quite easily, quite happily in fact, for the organization of the place was less than straightforward. A pleasantly circuitous labyrinth.

I meandered down the aisle, the bookcases set at angles rather than in parallel lines. I smelled cookies, coffee, and something musty—the books themselves, probably. Dust motes spun in the air.

Pulling down a volume at random, I read. 'If she whom I desire would stoop to love me, I should look down on Jove, If for one night my lady would lie by me, And I kiss the mouth I love, Then death come unrelenting.'

"Funny meeting you here."

The voice startled me. I spun around in surprise, gasping when I saw who it was. "What are _you_ doing here?"

Caius Volturri raised his eyebrows, a carefully manufactured expression of surprise on his face. "Why, Swan, how nice to see you." He smirked, glancing around. "What's got you so worked up?" And before I realized what he was doing, he pulled the book out of my hands.

I made a wild grab for it and he held it over my head.

"Give it back," I ordered.

"Be good," he admonished.

I dropped my arms, seeing that it was useless.

"I can't wait to find out what's got you so excited," he joked, and began reading aloud. "'O tender laughter of those wanton lips That draw all eyes upon them, Love's own lips, Soft-swelling, And instilling Sweets of honey in their kissing.' My God, Swan, does my father know that you're reading trash like this?"

My chin went up as I snatched the book away from him. "It's none of your business."

"I would think that anything involving my father is my business, don't you?"

"That's not what I've heard," I snapped and instantly regretted it.

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Just what have you heard then?"

I swallowed. "I'm your father's research assistant. I don't think that it's appropriate for us to be fraternizing."

"Fraternizing? Is that what we're doing? You make it sound so salacious. I was just window shopping, and I saw you in here, and I came in to say 'Hello.' There's nothing inappropriate about that, is there?"

I shook my head, utterly at a loss. Caius Volturri's behavior was inexplicable. What little I knew of him came primarily by way of gossip. I had never been one to be interested in such things—not that I ever had many friends to gossip with either—but it was difficult to stop myself from overhearing the comments of the other grad students as they chitchatted about the faculty. Usually the family of the faculty was out-of-bounds, but apparently Caius had slept with more than one of his father's students and was thus fair game. He was rarely in the country though, spending most of the time in Italy with his mother. We'd met one day when I stopped at his father's house to pick-up some books. Since then, he'd begun popping up at his father's office on campus when I was working, even going so far as to come up to the grad students' floor once, claiming that he was looking for his father there. It was all a little strange.

"Go ahead. Carry on," Caius suggested, waving at the bookshelves.

I cocked my head to the side, confused. "Are you just going to watch me?"

"Is there a problem with that?"

"It's—" I couldn't help myself, "weird." I clamped my lips together, conscious that I was being uncharacteristically rude.

"I think that I should do more reading. You're a role model. Won't you let me observe you in your natural habitat?"

I shook my head again. "I don't think—"

"Come on, Swan, don't be shy. Though I know that you can't help it."

I turned around, trying to ignore him. I scanned the shelves. After a moment, something caught my eye. I pulled it down.

"What's that?" Caius asked.

I hunched my shoulders, holding the volume close to my body as I opened the cover, trying to shield the contents from Caius' eyes. "Just a book."

He snorted. "Just a book. I don't think so."

"What do you mean?" I asked absently as I ran my eyes over the pages.

"I have to warn you, I'm new to this book porn of yours, so you have to be gentle."

"Shh!" I hissed in horror, glancing quickly from side to side, afraid that he'd been overheard.

"Relax. It's not like it's a sex shop."

I closed the book and held it close to my chest as I pretended to study the shelves again. "Why are you bothering me?" I asked. It wasn't like me to be so bold, but this bookshop was my territory. Caius didn't belong here. It almost reminded me of—

Of Cullen in my meadow. It was peculiar that I should think of Cullen again after all of this time.

"You intrigue me."

I didn't believe him. "I'm not that interesting."

"No, really. I'd heard that women like you existed, but I didn't believe it. You're like a dodo."

I pursed my lips.

He went on. "I just keep waiting for you to break form. You wouldn't be the first one of my father's students to accuse him of trying to seduce her."

My eyes snapped to his. "Are you kidding me?"

Caius smiled. "But then you surprise me, just like that, and I start to hope that I really have found a dodo after all."

"I don't know what you mean."

"I want to know how my father does it."

"Does what?"

"Manage to attract all of the shy virgins."

I felt a surge of anger rise up inside of me. "Don't be vulgar!"

"Can't help it."

Putting the book back on the shelf, I turned to go.

"Aren't you going to buy it?" Caius asked.

"I can't afford it," I mumbled.

"I'll buy it then."

I stopped in my tracks. "What?"

"I'll buy it."

"No," I said, spinning back around to face him.

"Why not?"

"It's not for you."

"How do you know?" he asked, picking it up. "It's in Italian. I'm Italian. We're made for each other."

"You wouldn't understand the story."

"What's it about?"

"A desire not to be indulged."

"I've never heard of such a thing."

"Then why do you want it?"

"Paper mache?"

I cried out in dismay. "That's not funny."

Caius handed the book to the sales clerk. "It's pretty hilarious actually. You're really scared."

I whirled around and left the shop as fast as I could.

When I found the book waiting for me in my mailbox at the university the next morning, I didn't know what to think. It was Dante's _La Vita Nuova._

 **AN:** **Carmina Burana 167 & 42 trans H Waddell. **

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

I should have known it was popular, given the line we had to go through to get inside. Nevertheless, I thought it was cheap. Lights flashed in varying hues of purple, annoying me, and the music was too loud to let anyone carry on a conversation without shouting.

People were taking advantage of the noise by attempting to dance, but there wasn't enough space for that, so they gesticulated and pulsed in a veritable sea of flesh. A Hieronymous Bosch painting, maybe.

What was I doing there?

"Hey, baby." A man fell against my stool. I stiffened, glad that I'd finished my drink so that I wouldn't be tempted to throw it in his face. "Wanna dance?"

I refused as politely as I could, cast one last glance around for Alice, and saw her dancing. I left.

Outside, I hurried past the long line of patrons waiting to get inside. There was a coffeehouse on the corner, and an unmarked sex club a few doors down, or so Alice had said.

"What were you doing there?" I heard a voice I recognized asking from behind me. Turning, I saw him. Caius Volturri. My employer's son.

What _had_ I been doing there? I didn't belong inside that club. Nevertheless, I resented the question. Why shouldn't I be there? Couldn't I be like everyone else just for one night?

"I would have thought that was obvious," I deflected.

Caius was not impressed. "It's really too much of a coincidence, don't you think, that we'd end up there together?" His tone was accusatory.

"I didn't follow you there," I said, not liking his implication.

"You went there on your own?" Caius' tone was disbelieving. "You looked like a deer trapped in the headlights of a semi."

"I went there with a friend."

"I saw her. Are you a lesbian?"

"I don't see how it matters to you."

"I just want to know."

"Get used to disappointment. It builds character."

"Not as much as success."

I walked faster. I wondered how on earth my employer could have possibly produced a son like Caius.

"Wait up," Caius said. "Don't fight it so much."

Against my better judgment, I couldn't help asking. "Fight what?"

"It's alright to admit that you're attracted to me."

"What?!" I spun around to face him.

"I can understand that you want to believe that you're not attracted to me. You probably think that you're above that sort of thing. Always so in control." He paused. "I'd like to see you out of control."

I wanted to spit on him. Or slap him. "What could you possibly have to gain from that?"

He smirked. "It's not what I would gain."

I felt my mouth drop open. "Screw you!"

He laughed. "That's the point."

I was done. I turned to leave. He wasn't serious. I wasn't stupid enough to think that.

I'd gone years without feeling the sort of humiliation that I'd felt in high school. Years without having to put up with that kind of ridicule. I wasn't by any means popular. I knew that the other grad students didn't really like me. But they left me alone. This—whatever Caius was doing—had to be some sort of game. And I wasn't playing.

It started to rain. Of course it would start to rain then.

"Wait there and I'll get my car," Caius ordered, not bothering to wait for me to answer before he ran away.

I crossed my arms over my chest and continued down the sidewalk.

I made it four blocks before Caius pulled up alongside me.

"Get in," he told me.

"No." I kept walking.

"Get in the car!" he growled, screeching to a halt and lurching out of the door. "Stop being childish," he told me, sprinting up to me.

"Don't touch me!" I warned him.

He raised his hands in front of me, not touching me but not letting me pass either. "Get in the car."

I glared at him. "Stop being irrational."

"Walking home in the rain when you've got a ride is rational?"

"When Caius Volturri is the one driving it is."

"You hate me so much that I can't help imagining it's a cover."

"And you're easy. Nothing's worth having if it isn't hard."

He snickered. "Oh, I'm hard."

"What are you, twelve?" I sneered.

"Wanting something doesn't make you a whore," Caius argued.

"Pretending to feel something that you don't does."

"I think you say things just to be witty," he said. "You don't mean them."

"Keep telling yourself that."

"I know you must feel something. Why else would you work so hard for my father?"

I gaped at him. "Are you really that dense?"

"He's a homosexual you know."

I shook my head, moving around him to continue down the street. "You don't know anything."

Caius swung into step beside me. The rain had stopped. "Then what are you doing with him?"

"He pays me. Are you just going to leave your car?"

"Let them ticket me. And don't tell me that it's the pay. It's more than that. You're supposed to work twenty hours a week. I know. I asked. You spend almost every day with my father. Tell me why."

What he was asking—I couldn't. "It's boring. You don't want to hear about it."

"I'm asking, aren't I?"

"Fine." I huffed. "His books."

"His _books_?"

"I _told_ you—"

"His books. What about them?"

"You should read Jean Baudrillard."

"Excuse me?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Baudrillard argued that desire, by definition, has no end. Can have no end. Satiation, absolute satisfaction, would mean death. Dissolution. The only thing that makes sense is to abstain. Not engage."

"Jean what's-his-name is all wrong."

"At least I don't have to depend on anyone else to be happy. Your satisfaction is predicated on the existence of another person. Mine isn't. I have my books."

"But you're not happy," Caius concluded.

"I'm not?" I glanced at him in surprise.

"You will run out of books. I saw you in that bar. You were doing your best, but you weren't comfortable. And you spend so much time with my father. How do you explain that if you aren't lonely?"

His words brought me up short. I froze, staring down at the sidewalk.

I wasn't lonely. Caius was wrong. I was happy. Or at least content. I was putting my life together.

It was true that I enjoyed spending time with his father. I got along so much better with him than my own father. I was getting better in other ways too. I really was. I was able to talk to people now and then without that crippling shyness getting in the way.

One day, I might be almost fully functioning. Could I really be normal?

No. It was too ridiculous. A fairy tale. But I wasn't lonely.

Caius was talking nonsense. I opened my mouth to tell him that too. To tell him that his platitudes might work on other people, but not me.

So when he kissed me, I wasn't ready for it. He took me utterly by surprise.

His hands on my shoulders and his lips on mine. He tasted like rain.

And I wanted—dear God, how I _wanted_ —to feel something. To feel _anything_. If only so that I would know that I was capable of it. That I wasn't completely broken.

Nothing.

I felt absolutely nothing.

Caius stepped back after a moment and smiled at me sadly. "My father will never love you," he said.

"I'm not in love with him," I replied.

"But you are in love with his books. And you can't have those either."

I didn't know what to say.

After a minute, he turned and walked away. It was the last time that I saw him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Meyer owns all**

 **Alice & Jasper **

**After the happy hour at the beginning of Gothic**

Alice did what she always did. She closed her eyes and dove.

What was it that all those goddamned self-help books of Bella's said? That we are only bound by the rules we set for ourselves.

So Alice wanted to be a contradiction in terms—herself and yet not herself. The person she was now and the person she could have been in high school but wasn't.

And she wanted to ground that son-of-a-bitch Jasper Hale into the pavement under her four-inch heels.

But that was going too far. Alice wasn't vengeful. Not all of the time at least.

Mostly, Alice just wanted to conduct an experiment. In high school, she'd never been allowed to be the person she wanted to be, the person who she thought she really was. She was always what other people and the pressure of circumstances—her family and upbringing and her own unstable nature—made of her. She wanted to know if this version of Alice would have managed any better.

The parameters of her experiment were flawed. She was testing herself against the Jasper of today, not the one of ten years ago. Nevertheless, Alice was determined to try. Thus, she felt herself turning into a weird, alien creature who lived only in the present, with no memories of the past, no history, no grudge against Jasper.

Except of course for those fleeting moments when she wondered if she could destroy him.

Naturally, Alice didn't fully realize the implications of her mistake until she and Jasper were having sex. It came to her mid-thrust: Memory. And not just memory of the things that Jasper had once said to her, but memory too of the other men at whom she'd thrown herself, devouring them and wanting to be devoured in return. And the collapse afterwards. The emptiness. Because she was faking and they were faking and there was nothing nothing nothing.

The line of a Beatles song filtered through Alice's head: "Come together right now, over me." She sang it softly to herself.

"What?" Jasper panted.

"Are you almost done?" she asked.

He shuddered and was indeed done. Thank God. Alice slithered out from under him.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Home."

"You're not staying?"

She laughed. "No."

"Are you okay?"

Alice smiled over her shoulder at him. "I'm just fine." And she willed it to be true. Because she couldn't ask Bella to pick up the pieces this time.

Jasper called her twice the next day. She let him go to voicemail, not bothering to listen to the messages.

He called her five times the day after that and seven times the day after that.

Rolling her eyes to herself, Alice finally answered.

"What?" she asked, not wasting time in a greeting.

There was a beat of silence. "Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You haven't been picking up. I almost asked Bella if there was something wrong."

Alice chuckled to herself. Jasper was afraid of Bella. He'd asked Alice if he should apologize to Bella for being a jerk in high school, but Alice had warned him not to do so. Not unless he wanted his throat ripped out. Bella wasn't the kind to be impressed by words. "Been busy," she replied.

"Too busy to send a text?"

Couldn't he take a hint? "Look, Jasper, it was fun. For a while. It's over."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that." Alice hung up, annoyed at the clichéd nature of it all.

Jasper was waiting at Alice's shop when she arrived to open it up the next day. "What are you doing here?" she demanded, angry.

"I want to see you."

"You've seen me. Now go."

"I want to know why you've suddenly changed your mind about us."

Alice wasn't going to have this fight with him out on the sidewalk. Shaking her head, she unlocked the door and let him follow her inside. Fortunately, she had an hour before any of her employees would arrive. Flipping on the lights, Alice cut to the chase. "It was a mistake."

"I don't understand."

"I thought you were supposed to be smart."

"Guess not."

Alice wondered how someone so dense had managed to get his PhD.

An hour later, they were in Alice's back office, the computer screen displaying a PowerPoint that Alice had put together for a sociology class in college.

"As you can see from this graph," Alice said, "the victims of bullying are two to nine times more likely to consider suicide than their peers."

"I'm sorry, Alice. I've apologized over and over. But I'm not that guy anymore. Can't you give me a chance?" Jasper pleaded.

Alice snorted. "What for? I'm flat-chested and weird, isn't that what you used to say? And crazy. That hasn't changed. You used to tell people that I must be the one who wore the pants in the relationship with Bella. Guess that explains why you couldn't get me off the other night."

"I thought that we were past all of that."

Alice stabbed at the back arrow button on the keyboard, returning to the slide on the long-term effects of bullying. "Wrong answer. Guess you failed this test."

"Why didn't you tell me that you felt this way?"

"I don't owe you anything."

"I was falling in love with you."

Alice's hand was slapping Jasper's face before she'd even really registered what he'd said. Surprised at the stinging in her palm, she stood up, shocked at her actions. How could she do something like that? Jasper gazed at her sadly, a red handprint on his cheek.

Alice steeled herself. He'd deserved it. "You can't love me," she warned him.

"Why not?"

For a split-second, Alice felt her vision skewing, the office shuddering around her and Jasper's face swimming. Then all was right again.

Alice recognized the danger signals. She had to pump the brakes.

"It was a game," Alice said. She needed him to go away so that she could put herself back together.

"You were just faking all this time? Why? To hurt me?" Jasper asked.

Yes. She wanted to nod. She just looked at him.

Her silence was all the answer Jasper needed. Now he was the one who was angry. "So you've just been screwing with me? You and Edward, you can't let go of the past."

Alice was annoyed to be lumped in with Edward. She was nothing like him.

Jasper continued. "We can't live in the past. It shapes us, yeah, but we have to live in the here and now."

"And pretend the past never happened?"

"No. But you don't let it stop you from having what you want now."

"I've been institutionalized," Alice admitted, deciding it was the only way to get rid of him.

A horrified expression passed over Jasper's face. "Because of high school?"

"No, though that didn't help."

"You look okay to me."

The sound of employees arriving out front stopped Alice from responding.

"I'm not giving up," Jasper said as he rose to his feet. "Unless you tell me that it was just for revenge."

Alice couldn't lie. She said, "It wasn't only revenge."

The look of sheer joy on Jasper's face startled Alice.

He didn't realize the risk he was running. 'If he doesn't ruin it,' Alice thought, 'then I will.'

In fact, if she wasn't very careful, she might actually have that breakdown that she feared so much.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 **Alice and Jasper after the Gallery Opening**

The Christian apologist, Clement of Alexandria, accused the Egyptian pagans of concealing all of their true wisdom. The Egyptians, Clement said, communicated everything by way of allegory and had taught Pythagoras and Plato to do the same. Oracular expression was a kindred discipline, communicating in round about ways subjects too sophisticated for the likes of ordinary men. For this reason, the prophets of the Bible were likened to the Sibyls and the Pythian priestesses.

We ought not to credit such notions. To do so would suggest an endorsement of the sort of dilettante speculations that are such a discredit to our name. No, we will not so much as consider it. A babbling madwoman speaks not with the voice of Apollo, nor even YHWH. She is, by definition, a deviant.

Were Mary Alice Brandon born but a century earlier, she would have been lucky to find herself the commodity of a sideshow barker. "A real specimen of the fairy folk," he'd yell. "She can read your future and see into your past." We find it much more likely that Miss Brandon would have found herself the resident of an asylum, her head shorn of those spiky locks on which she so prided herself and her shrill voice screaming out for succor in the most of vulgar tones.

Indeed, Miss Brandon is reputed to have had a distant relative who only just escaped the vagaries of the tranquilizing chair by running away with a carnival. This is merely hearsay and we are not the sort to indulge in wanton speculation but still.

We are not ignorant, either, of the very recent testimonies collected by Folklore Societies as to the persistence of strange rumors about witch women, seers and the like, even in the very midst of modernity. Wicked creatures who haven't a care for the law or humanity, women accused of bartering not only their own souls but those of others. The devil with whom they bargain may be merely a figment of their own fantasies, but imagine the foul deeds in which they engage otherwise. Perhaps not the slaughter of babies—we are willing to grant that such claims are merely rhetoric—but otherwise they seek in every way to distinguish themselves from their fellow man. Are they not alien? Are they not utterly strange? Were they simply to adhere to the ordinary customs and habits of their own people, they never would arouse any suspicion in the first place.

Thus, our medieval brethren may have had the right of it, though we must question the effectiveness of those spells to deter elf-shot. And we cannot endorse the wilder eccentricities of the Witch-Hunter Generals, with their cruel methods. But we can understand their reasons.

We are not monsters. We seek to slay the monsters. The regulation of an orderly life is our goal. The very fact that anyone might want to resist our efforts is evidence enough of their aberration.

Miss Brandon, the subject of our current inquiry, is claiming that she over-indulged in the juice of her sister-maenads entirely by accident. She was told that it was a low-alcohol variety. We are skeptical but reserve judgment. After all, who are we to judge?

She has returned from her doctor's visit and is perched on the edge of her sofa, watching her lover, a Mister Jasper Hale, potter about the kitchen, preparing a repast. He not only escorted her home from the fiasco at the gallery, but has remained at her side ever since, scheduling her appointment and accompanying her to and from the doctor's office. We admit that Mister Hale's solicitous behavior would, in some, be a cause for concern, but we approve of Mister Hale entirely. He is an upstanding young man with an entirely normal, if sometimes dull, outlook on life. In another age, he could very easily have been a feudal lord, keeping his serfs in line and ensuring that those witchy women didn't get too much out of hand. Our only point of concern with Mister Hale is his interest in a Miss Brandon.

"So the chicken will be done in twenty minutes," Mister Hale explains, wandering into the living room.

Miss Brandon nods, looking despondent.

Mister Hale joins her on the sofa. "Feel better?"

"My meds don't kick in that fast," she reminds him.

"Meds don't fix everything," he argues unscientifically, a momentary lapse for which we will forgive him. "Not that I necessarily know what I'm talking about here, but it just seems to me that there're always other elements to something like this."

"Something like this?" Miss Brandon asks. "What would you know about it?"

"As I said, I don't necessarily know what I'm talking about."

"And you don't."

"We're more than our chemistry."

Miss Brandon shrugs.

"So are you feeling better?" he asks again.

"How could I be?"

"Well, what do you need?"

"A time machine."

"I'm sure that no one's going to hold anything against you."

Miss Brandon shakes her head. "You don't know Bella."

"If you apologize—"

"I don't need to apologize. She'll just act like everything's the same, but there'll be this undercurrent."

"But if you apologize—"

"If I try to apologize, she'll just shut me down."

"So don't let her. Force her to really talk it out."

"I couldn't do that."

"Why not? Just talk about everything in the open."

Miss Brandon holds her tongue but we know what she is thinking. She and her friend Miss Swan are far too partial to those games of concealment, the use of those riddles by which they think to mystify others, bamboozling the ignorant with a display of convoluted speech and allegorical claims. They need not bother going to such lengths. One can't mask insanity with a fancy show forever.

Mister Hale leans over and kisses Miss Brandon's shoulder over the fabric of her blouse. Underneath, he knows that there is a tattoo of a labyrinth. We need not, of course, explain how this bit of self-mutilation was but another demonstration of Miss Brandon's perversity, acquired—she says—in celebration of her graduation from college but really, we think, in a manner akin to the wild exaltation of an ancient devotee of the Syrian goddess.

"Have I ever told you how much I love this tattoo?" Mister Hale asks.

And we had such high hopes for him!


	8. Chapter 8

**Meyer owns all**

 **Outtake: Seth at the factory/warehouse**

Brunelleschi. Seth was all about Brunelleschi right now. If it wasn't Brunelleschi, then Seth didn't care.

That wasn't entirely true. Seth had a dim vision of the Medici Chapel, the forms of men and women contorted on daises, their limbs all foreshortened and the proportions just slightly out of whack.

Like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Seth didn't think that he could just suspend people in the air, but he figured that he could build a model of one of the galleries and shoot from above. Make it look like they were on the ceiling.

But how would he work out the proportions? He would have to run an ad for "People who are out of proportion."

It could work. Lots of people were out of proportion. Seth, for instance, had very big feet.

He smirked to himself. One day he'd grow up. One day, in the distant future.

Maybe.

Seth had returned from Vancouver early. His parents were just a little too much for him to deal with sometimes. It was like his family was trapped in Romano's "Fall of the Giants" but Seth was the only one who cared or even noticed that the heavens were stumbling out of the sky.

"Nice to see that you're finally making some money," his father had said, by way of congratulations for Seth's new venture with the gallery.

As if Seth hadn't been killing himself for years working side jobs to support himself until he could get his career as an artist going. Seth had just rolled his eyes at his father, though.

After all, you can't really trade your parents in.

"Have you met a nice girl?" his mother asked.

And that was when Seth decided to come home early. It was just too much. His parents didn't get him. At all.

They didn't even understand his art

That was the good thing about Bella. She didn't get him—not all of him anyway—but it didn't matter. Difference was okay.

Seth knew that he and Bella were meant to be friends the minute he stumbled upon her sitting in a coffee shop staring at a painting by Poussin in a book. She had stared at it for thirty minutes while Seth watched surreptitiously from a corner.

Finally he couldn't take it anymore. He went up to her.

"Do you paint?" he asked.

She stared at him, dumbfounded. "Ugh, no." Clearly uncomfortable, she began closing the book.

"I'm just asking because that's one of my favorite artists," Seth said.

Bella paused, studying Seth's face for a minute. She seemed to be looking for evidence of something—evidence that Seth wasn't a creeper probably. Whatever she saw must have reassured her, or maybe it was just Poussin. The fact that she'd found someone with whom to share Poussin.

No one ever understood Poussin.

She opened the book again. "I just don't get it," she said.

"Get what?"

"Who is I? And why is he here? Why not somewhere else?"

The questions were all ridiculous, of course. But that was Poussin for you.

And that was Bella. She was strange. And often unfriendly. But Seth found it interesting that someone so strange and unfriendly could be one of the nicest people he'd ever met. Not that Bella would have liked having this pointed out to her. Which just made it all the funnier.

So when Seth got to the factory/warehouse that day, and snuck through an open window and took a few shots with his camera of the upper story—just like a barrel-vaulted nave in a cathedral—only to be brought up short by the sound of Bella's voice pleading with someone, there was just no chance that Seth could leave without trying to help.

The police told him to stay on the line and wait for assistance. But Bella needed help right away. Seth wasn't sure that he could afford to wait.

He wished Jane was there. She would probably be packing a few weapons.

Seth didn't have any weapons. What he did have was a camera and a phone and a wallet. He looked around. Shouldn't there be bits of spare pipe lying about?

'Who abandons a factory and leaves it this clean?' Seth wondered.

There was only machinery, all of it too heavy to be of any use.

He glanced at his phone, checking the time. He'd been waiting for two minutes already.

He heard Bella talking again. The police were taking too long.

Seth hung up and texted Alice. He was still angry at her for the show she'd put on at the gallery, but if she responded then he would he forgive her.

Steeling his nerves, Seth peered around a machine at the scene playing out in the center of the floor.

It was really messed up, but he couldn't help thinking that the redhead looked just like the model from Frederic Leighton's Flaming June.

 **AN: The Poussin painting is Et in Arcadia Ego**


	9. Chapter 9

**Meyer owns all**

 **Sometime after the "conclusion" of Gothic**

 **BPOV**

Edward was still asleep when I woke up.

Slipping carefully out from under his arm, I got out of bed and hesitated. Was he really asleep? I leaned over him just to make sure. He let out a snore and I smiled. _He was out like a light_.

Tiptoeing out of the bedroom, I crept into the living room and turned on my laptop. I figured that I had twenty maybe thirty minutes tops before Edward woke up. I quickly logged onto my fanfiction account and went to my story.

 _My story._

My _Supernatural_ story.

I giggled at the fact that I'd gotten five reviews. I had more people reading this story than my books and articles combined!

But when Edward found me half-an-hour-hour later my head was on the desk.

"What's wrong?" he asked, kissing my forehead.

"I've been flamed," I moaned.

"Just because they don't like your story doesn't mean that you're being flamed."

What did he know? I never should've told him that I was writing fanfiction! "I'm not _making_ them read. Do you read stories that you don't like?" I demanded, sitting up straight to glare at the screen.

"Sometimes. If I'm hoping that the story changes." Edward drew up a chair and sat next to me.

"Do you complain when it doesn't?"

"There's no point."

"Exactly." I hmphed.

"What did they say?"

"That I don't belong on this website. It's censorship!"

Edward laughed. "What're you writing? Porn?"

"I was _not_ writing porn!"

"What are you writing?"

I waved a hand. "Just something. It's not important. I'm not following boring narratives _rules_ , maybe. But what are rules? The Winchester boys don't follow rules. Jorge Luis Borges didn't follow rules."

"Jorge Luis Borges? On a fanfiction site?"

"Fuck you. Do you think people who read fanfiction are too stupid to like Borges? Now who's the elitist?"

"You do sound snooty sometimes. Even in high school you did."

"In high school? What does that even mean? How can you be snooty if you're at the bottom of the social hierarchy?"

Edward wisely just shrugged.

I continued. "I'm not snooty. I am me. This is who I am. I'm not an elitist. How dare they?!"

"You actually used the word _tautology_?" Edward asked, reading the screen before I angled it away from his eyes.

"So?"

"You couldn't just say 'circular'?

"I didn't think of it."

Edward looked at me.

" _Tautology_ is a perfectly serviceable word," I huffed. At his burst of laughter, I stomped a foot, "I gave examples!"

"Maybe they think that you're trying to take over something that they think belongs to them."

"Do I complain when Dean only wants to bang the pretty ex-cheerleaders just because I'm not a pretty ex-cheerleader?"

Edward tried to interrupt, but I wouldn't let him.

"No. And they don't even have the guts to sign-in. They write reviews as Guests so that we can't have an adult conversation debating the issue of 'elitism.' And I'm not calling them stupid. _They_ 're calling _themselves_ stupid! They're projecting their bullshit low self-esteem issues on me! It would be like me telling Charlize Theron that her being pretty is a personal attack on me! It's her fucking _face_. What the fuck is she supposed to do? Stop making perfume ads so that people like me don't feel bad about ourselves? How does that make sense? When I don't understand something—which is often—I either look it up or skip it. These people apparently write a fucking letter of complaint. Like they're not responsible for their own ignorance of the subject, when they are writing their review _on the very piece of technology that they could use to look the reference up_! In this day and age, with all of the information on the internet, there is no excuse for ignorance. Ha! _This one_ says that I wrote this story _just_ to make people feel stupid. That's like saying all the shapechanging baby fanfiction is just trying to make readers who don't have shapechanging babies feel bad about not having shapechanging babies. And Dean was so cute cuddling with the baby in that episode!" Edward tried to break in but I wouldn't let him. "I write what I write because that's how I write. Because it's who _I_ am, not because I'm trying to _oppress_ someone _else_! And just for the sake of argument, let's say that I _am_ smart, these people are trying to make me feel _bad_ about it?! Talk about the dumbing down of America. And my intelligence is all I have! I'm supposed to change so that they feel better about themselves? How is it my fault that they choose not to read? They're smart-shaming me! Like that bitch on tv who got suspended for insulting the tow truck lady. They're acting like I did that to them—when I didn't—when, in fact, they're the ones doing it to me! How fucked up is that? And I don't think that I'm that smart anyhow. I only know what I know. Other people know all about Japanese anime and how to read Sanskrit and science and computers and cars and how to talk to people and make friends and twitter and twerk." I finally stopped my tirade. Mostly because I was out of oxygen.

"It's _tweet_. Do you even know what twerking is?"

"Charlie had MTV, Edward. But that's my point! One of my reviewers asked me if I was on FB and I didn't know what that meant."

"It means Facebook."

"Yes, I know that _now_ , but at the time I didn't. And I didn't get mad at them for using an acronym I didn't understand."

"I think we should go out for breakfast."

"I don't want to eat. I'm mad."

"Because they hurt your feelings?"

"Damn right they hurt my feelings." I crossed my arms. "They're mean. You know, the effects of cyberbullying are supposed to be just as bad if not worse than face-to-face bullying." I'd learned that from my group. Several of the members had had problems with self-esteem because of it.

"So just ignore them. This isn't high school. You don't have to deal with assholes."

"I promised everyone outtakes!"

"So do your out—whatever, and forget about it."

"I don't even know why they'd want a damn outtake if they hate me so much."

"I'm sure they don't hate you."

"Good God, I _hope_ they hate me. Otherwise I can't imagine how they'd talk to someone they actually hated." I typed furiously away, clicking the buttons on the website. "Take it! Take that damn outtake!" I paused. "This one says that I couldn't come up with a cohesive ending so I just came up with a bunch of alternatives. Well, okay maybe they're right about the cohesive ending—though they couldn't be bothered to tell me what didn't make sense about it which is the whole point of this fucking website—but I'm not the only fanfiction writer to give alternate endings. Fanfiction _by definition_ is alternate endings. I just wanted to reward all of the reviewers who sent in possible solutions—and I'm not the only one who thought that Dean could very well have been a vampire! Besides, I ripped the whole idea of off the movie _Clue._ How can you get more pop culture than _Clue_? And I'm a fucking elitist?" I paused. "Look at that! Try flaming me without making a grammatical mistake next time, elusive Guest reviewer #2!"

"Uh, Bella—"

"That wasn't an elitist thing to say!"

"It kind of was."

"I make grammatical mistakes all of the time. Reviewers are always telling me about grammar and spelling and logical mistakes I've made."

"You went to college. You had opportunities other people don't have."

"They at least have the phone or computer they're reading me on!"

"Maybe they're at work. Maybe they get picked on and the only way they can feel better about themselves is by picking on you in return."

"That's illogical!"

"You know I love you, but do you really believe that you weren't trying to make us feel stupid in high school to make up for the fact that we picked on you for not fitting in?"

I gaped at Edward. "I struggled so much just to get through every day. It would have blown my mind to hear that any of you felt bad about anything I'd done. I had no power."

"You had more power than you know. James hated the way you made him feel."

I shook my head. "I didn't do it on purpose."

"Maybe these people—" Edward gestured at the screen "—don't realize what they're doing."

" _This_ person says I should stop writing. That's not a mistake."

Edward frowned. "That does sound over the line."

"They trying to kick me off this site—if that's not elitist then I don't know what is." I sighed. "But they used the word 'please' so I suppose it's not that bad."

Edward nudged me. "See? It could be worse."

I pursed my lips. "They're still mean."

He kissed me on the top of the head and stood up. "Just let it roll, babe. These fuckers aren't worth it."

I sighed. He was right. I shouldn't let it bother me. But still—

I'd closed the laptop by the time that Edward returned, freshly showered.

"Do you feel better now?" Edward asked.

"No. I'm sad."

"I thought you said that some of the reviews you'd been getting were really nice."

"They were. Even when they have something critical to say, it's a conversation."

"Well there you are."

"I suppose you're right." But I still felt bad.

"Let's go out for breakfast."

"Fine. Fine! I don't know why you're so damn chipper this morning!" I snapped and instantly felt bad. I was taking my stress out on Edward. _This is how it starts_ , I thought darkly. I was becoming a bully because I felt like I'd been bullied. "I'm sorry," I said contritely.

Edward shook his head. "I like seeing you angry." He paused. "When you're angry at someone else that is."

That made me smile. "Watch out!" I warned him. "I might use the word 'tautology' at breakfast."

"I wouldn't have it any other word."

 **AN: Months ago, I tore someone apart so badly when they asked me to stop posting my "fake" chapters that they blocked me from PMing them an apology. I learned my lesson. I am truly sorry. The joy of attacking someone for trying to censor me isn't worth the guilt of inflicting cruelty on a stranger. So please sign-in when you review even if you're going to call me names.**

 **For those of you who are angry that Edward seemed to be taking the side of the bully, I was just using him to tease out the discussion I'd like to have with a few of my Guest reviewers. Should he have just cussed them out? Maybe, but that wouldn't have helped my argument for de-escalation.**


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